The Last Sword Maker

by Brian Nelson

  “Turn here!” It was Mei who spoke. She said the words with such conviction that her mother obeyed immediately.

  “The Xi Bo bridge?” Ying asked. “It’s an awful risk.”

  They were on a wide road with two lanes in each direction. Up ahead was an old stone bridge. It had three archways under it. A large one in the center where the four lanes of traffic hourglassed down to two. And two smaller archways on either side. These were only three or four feet wide. Big enough for pedestrians and bicycles—or a very small car.

  Honking furiously, Ying drove onto the sidewalk on the right side, hurtling them toward the narrow archway. They whizzed by the long lines of stopped traffic, swish-swish-swish.

  The olive-drab monster was still in pursuit. It drove onto the sidewalk behind them and began to close. A few seconds later, the bloody grill filled the back window. The truck gave them a rough push, and they were momentarily tossed as if on a roller coaster. Ying barely managed to keep control of the wheel. The huge truck surged again.

  The stone archway rushed up to them.

  They were so close they could see the texture of the stone and mortar. At just two feet away, they all gasped.

  Metal shrieked, the side mirrors popped off, and a fountain of sparks flew from either side of the car. They all lurched forward with the deceleration as the car was squeezed. For a moment, it felt as if they would be stuck, but then the walls widened, just barely, and they were spat out the far side. They hopped down onto the main road and picked up speed as the huge truck sat askew on the far side of the little archway.

  There was a collective gasp of relief. “Good thinking, Mei-Mei,” Ying said.

  “Hear, hear!” Ryan cheered.

  Eric gave her a squeeze. “Nice job!”

  Mei grinned.

  Yes, they had gotten away, but they all knew that something wasn’t right.

  “How did they find us so fast?”

  “Facial recognition?” Ryan guessed. “There are tens of thousands of cameras throughout the city.”

  “Whatever it was,” Ying said, “let’s hope they can’t do it again.”

  Just then Eric heard a distant whump-whump-whump. It was barely audible at first but quickly grew louder. Looking out, he saw them—three helicopters. They were still a mile away but heading straight toward them.

  Eric’s heart sank. It seemed as if there was no use. Against Meng and the entire Chinese army, what chance did they have?

  “What do we do now?”

  “We give up,” Ryan said. “If we can survive until the deadline—”

  “No,” Ying said, “they’ll kill us long before then.”

  “I’m not going back,” Eric said with heavy finality, remembering the Japanese soldiers in the cave. “There has to be a solution. Think! How do you hide from a helicopter?”

  “We switch cars,” Ying said.

  It was a good idea, but the helicopters were too close. “No time for that now.”

  There was an agonizing silence in the car, the drum of rotors growing louder. There could be no mistake—the helicopters were heading right for them.

  “The Octopus,” Mei said.

  Ying whipped the car to the right. “That’s it!”

  “What?” Eric and Ryan said together.

  “The octopus is an underground tunnel system,” Mei said. “It goes under the river. There are three entrances on the east side of the river, five on the west. But they’re all connected, so you can go in one tunnel and come out any of the other ones.”

  “It’s perfect,” Ying said, reaching back to tousle Mei’s hair. “Three helicopters can’t cover eight exits.”

  “How far?” Eric asked.

  “It’s only a mile from here.”

  “Do it.”

  Ying rushed through the city, running light after light. Here, at least, there was some tree cover that might make it more difficult for the choppers to see them. Then Ying went left, and they were on the ramp to the highway. No more cover.

  Eric looked back, and sure enough the three helicopters tipped their noses and descended on them.

  “Hurry, Māmā!”

  “I’m trying.”

  They raced down the freeway as fast as the little car could go. Almost immediately, they began to see signs for the tunnel, only a kilometer ahead. Their pursuers were now so close that Eric feared they would open fire at any moment. They were attack helicopters with thin profiles, a two-tiered cockpit, and stubby wings fitted with rocket tubes and guns.

  Up ahead, they could see the darkness of the tunnel entrance. Another half minute, and they’d be there. But the choppers were almost on top of them. “Please, Māmā.”

  Suddenly, two of the huge olive-drab military trucks descended the ramp just in front of them and blocked the entrance to the tunnel.

  Reflexively Ying slammed on the brakes.

  “Quick—turn around!” Ryan shouted.

  But it was too late. Three more of the monsters were coming up behind them.

  “How did they know?” Ryan cried.

  They were trapped. The thump of rotors was almost deafening.

  Mei spoke in Eric’s ear, supplicating: “Please, don’t let them take us. Please.”

  Eric pulled Mei’s head to his shoulder. “I know it’s hard, but try to be brave.”

  So this is how it ends, Eric thought. After all they had fought, after all that had happened, they would never make it home.

  That was when he heard a strange sound. A whistling sound like the high-pitched shriek of a falling bomb.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Fallout

  Tangshan, China

  The nearest helicopter exploded in a tremendous flash of light. It seemed to freeze there, somehow held up in the sky, inside a halo of compressed air. Then pieces went flying everywhere. The second helicopter dipped evasively, and Eric saw a small projectile descend past it, barely missing it. Then somehow, quick as a wasp, it made a U-turn in midair and struck its target from the bottom. Then that helicopter, too, exploded in a flash of white light.

  As the smoldering carcass fell to earth, the rotors went whistling off in every direction.

  Almost at the same instant, two more projectiles slammed into the huge trucks in front of them. There was a blinding light, and a shock wave with massive overpressure. The little car’s windshield cracked, and everyone’s ears popped. When they could see again, all that remained of the trucks was fiery wreckage and billowing black smoke. The third helicopter peeled away quickly. The dart chasing it missed, turned in midair, and exploded against an overpass just as the chopper ducked under it.

  Seconds later, there were three more detonations as the three trucks behind them blossomed into fireballs.

  Eric had no idea what was going on. It all had happened in a couple of seconds—but Ying seemed to grasp the situation at once. Gunning the engine, she headed straight for the flaming wrecks. Swerving between them, they all felt the heat of the burning wreckage. The next instant, they were safe in the cool underground tunnel.

  “What the hell just happened?” Eric cried.

  “I have no idea,” Ryan said.

  “Curtiss,” Ying said, grinning. “He said he would help us if he could.”

  Eric shook his head in amazement. Ryan laughed with elation. “Fucking A!”

  Eric looked down at his forearm. There were four crescents pressed into his skin where Mei’s fingernails had been.

  * * *

  Jane had watched in awe as the weapons specialist launched the missile from the reaper drone. It reminded her of the MIRV warheads from the Cold War—missiles designed to break apart over a city in order to hit multiple targets. The difference here was that each small warhead was computer guided and even had its own camera. As the eight projectiles came apart, the specialist’
s screen had divided into eight sections, showing each smaller warhead’s approach to each target. It was surreal to watch. A wide-angle shot of the highway leading into the tunnel. The helicopters crossing overhead. Then the blistering zooming of the bombs as they rushed to their targets. At the last instant, she had actually seen into the cockpit of one of the gunships and seen the Chinese writing on the pilot’s helmet.

  On a bigger screen was the same scene, but from a satellite. It showed the little car escaping into the tunnel. She felt a deep wave of relief. Curtiss had just saved their lives. Yet, he had remained cool and composed, standing there, leaning over the back of the specialist’s chair, a cup of coffee in hand. “A good first strike,” he said, “but you need to get that last chopper.”

  “Working on it, sir.”

  They had arrived at the safe house only ninety minutes ago. They were far from the city, on a beautiful estate set at the base of a karst range—picturesque limestone monuments clad in lush green vegetation. Despite the iconic Chinese landscape, the place reminded Jane of a Tuscan villa. The house had white stucco walls and a clay-tiled roof, and in back stretched a long undulating vineyard. The State Department had cleverly elevated large sections of grapevines to create a high roof of living vegetation. And under this and some artfully placed camouflage netting, they kept three helicopters and a drone runway from the prying eyes of Chinese planes and satellites. Jane had watched as Sawyer and Loc had peeled back a forty-foot section of camouflage netting and launched one of the drones.

  The safe house’s only drawback was the two-hour drive from Tangshan. “Couldn’t you find a safe house closer to the city?” she had asked Curtiss.

  “Not if I wanted to hide a helipad and an airstrip.”

  Jane turned her attention back to the satellite image showing the entrance of the tunnel.

  “Sir,” one of the technicians interrupted, “we’re having a problem with the uplink.”

  Curtiss looked at the satellite image. It still displayed the wreckage of the HG-17 transport trucks, but it was fading in and out. “Is it the link, or the satellite itself?”

  “Unknown, sir.”

  “Well, figure it out, and fast. Do we still have control of the UAV?”

  “Negative, sir.” It was the drone pilot speaking now.

  “Damn it! We need to get that last chopper.”

  Curtiss was frustrated, but he wasn’t surprised that the UAV had failed. Drones were excellent weapons against low-tech enemies such as the Taliban, but not against a state-of-the-art military like China’s, a military that liked to keep control of its airspace. A drone was controlled by a C-band signal from the ground and a Ku-band signal from a satellite, and it was a relatively easy thing to jam both. Even ISIS had done it a few times. With no way to control the drone, it just flew until it ran out of fuel.

  Things were not looking good. Curtiss had just caused a major international incident. Even if the mission succeeded, the Preacher was going to have his ass. And now this: they were blind, with one enemy helicopter still in the air and with no way to help the people they had come to save.

  “Okay, let’s move to the backup system,” he said. “Get the Key Hole satellite over the Philippines. Then get the second Reaper in the air ASAP. They’ll be trying to jam it, but we might be able to get another shot off. If our friends can pick the right tunnel exit and make it out of the city, they can still do it.”

  Chapter Forty

  Carbon Rain

  Tangshan, China

  The little car rushed through the underground tunnels of the octopus, taking turn after turn until they were certain no one on the ground was tailing them. Then they headed for a westbound exit. They came down a long, dark curve, then suddenly saw sunlight and the mouth of the tunnel. Ying hit the gas. There were no military trucks and no rotor beats. She had chosen the right one.

  But just as they were crossing from darkness to light, the missing gunship pounced down on them, its landing gear stopping just feet above the concrete. Mei yelped. Ying slammed on the brakes, and the little car skidded to a stop less than ten feet from the helicopter’s nose. They could see the pilots in the cockpit, and though the pilots’ eyes were covered by the visors of their helmets, they both wore contented grins.

  As Ying put the car in reverse, Eric watched the gunner flick a switch, and the six barrels of the minigun in the helicopter’s nose began spinning with a high-pitched whirl. The little car lurched backward but achingly slowly, and Eric found himself hypnotized by those rotating barrels, anticipating the blaze of fire. The shirt would never be able to handle such a burst.

  He held Mei tight. Please work.

  But the bullets didn’t come.

  Ying got the car half turned around and was putting it in drive.

  “Wait!” Mei cried.

  They all looked up at the helicopter. Something had happened to the pilots. Black-red blood was pouring down their lower faces. The minigun was still spinning. The helicopter’s main and tail rotors were still whirling. It hovered perfectly still.

  “Are they …?” Mei asked.

  “I think so,” Eric said.

  “How?”

  No one had an answer.

  “What do we do?” Ryan asked.

  “We keep going,” Ying said.

  She eased the car forward very slowly. They had to squeeze between the landing gear and the highway guardrail to get by. As they slid beneath the rotor wash, the hood and roof of the little car trembled, as if they were coming out of a car wash. Eric looked into the cockpit and saw the pilots, rigid and unmoving, with blood still pulsing out of their heads, splashing against their visors and down their faces—which, Eric knew, meant that their hearts were still beating. Neither pilot moved, yet somehow the helicopter stayed in the air.

  As soon as Ying had cleared the narrow squeeze, she hit the accelerator. Eric looked back through the rear window, waiting for the helicopter to finally pitch to one side and crash. But it didn’t. Something held it there.

  But how? Had Curtiss developed some new weapon while Eric and Ryan were in captivity? But that didn’t explain how the chopper stayed in flight.

  “We have to get out of the city,” Ryan said. “They won’t wait for us forever.”

  “Who?” Eric asked.

  “Our ride out of this godforsaken country.”

  “I’ll get us there,” Ying said. “As long as we can make it to the crossroads, we’ll be safe.”

  Within ten minutes, the city began to get shorter—the size of the buildings steadily shrinking from skyscrapers to tenements to squat industrial buildings. The highway narrowed from five to three to two lanes, and a sandy, parched landscape began to assert itself on man’s creations. As the miles flew past, the landscape became more and more forbidding—a harsh desert wilderness. There was less and less traffic. Less and less life.

  They were inching toward a distant plateau. Soon enough, the road began to rise steadily. They traveled for almost an hour, each mile giving them greater confidence that they had made good their escape. Looking back, they could see the city spread out in the distance, like a child’s model. Mei turned on the radio. Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean.”

  “Almost there,” Ying said. Finally, they reached the crest of a plateau, and the road leveled off once more. Eric saw the crossroads: a wide, windswept traffic circle with six roads radiating from it like spokes of a wheel, each pointing toward distant cities.

  A huge signboard gave directions and distances:

  Qingdao—652 KM

  Dalian—703 KM

  Beijing—179 KM

  Xi’an—1215 KM

  Shanghai—1217 KM

  Suddenly, Ying gasped.

  Mei looked up from Eric’s chest. “No!” she said. “No, no, no …”

  Two of the huge army trucks emerged from behind the signboard, rushing to bl
ock them. Ying swerved to avoid them, crossing the median, but two more trucks appeared. She slammed on the brakes, and they skidded to a stop. She pushed down on the stick, trying to find reverse, turning her head to look out the back window. So desperate and beautiful at the same time. But then another set of trucks came over the crest of the plateau. It was an ambush. Ying tried to maneuver, but each time she found a gap, a truck would fill it. The monsters squeezed and squeezed, their slanted grills panting diesel fumes. Soon they were completely surrounded. But the trucks continued to close in.

  The little car shifted as it was pushed. They heard the crumpling of aluminum and the pop of plastic.

  Ying looked to her daughter, suddenly focusing all her attention on her, looking for strength, reason, an answer that made some shred of sense. A tear rolled down her cheek. It had all been for nothing.

  “No, no, no,” Mei kept saying.

  Abruptly, the trucks stopped, then rolled back. Soldiers came and pulled them roughly from the car. Ying tried to talk to them, pleading, but they slapped her and pushed her around. They forced everyone to their knees. Eric could see at least fifty soldiers, rushing out the backs of the huge trucks. Then came the unmistakable whump-whump of a helicopter, and soon four were circling overhead. Three of the slim attack helicopters and a fatter transport type. This one settled down in a whirlwind of dust.

  * * *

  Striding out from under the rotor wash were Dr. Chu and Captain Xi. Xi had a smug look of victory on his face. He was proud of his catch. But Chu was nervous and fidgety. He went straight up to Eric and slapped him across the face. It was a pathetic blow for a full-grown man, Eric thought defiantly. “You betrayed me, Dr. Hill. I trusted you, and you betrayed me.” His voice cracked. “Now Meng will kill you. It is a waste. A stupid waste.”

  Meng emerged from the helicopter and walked toward them, cool, unhurried. Even at thirty yards, his presence eclipsed Chu’s and Xi’s. Never, not even in that murderous rage when he killed Olex, had Eric seen such pure hatred on the man’s face.