Back in the Ming dynasty the entire length of the wall was manned by its own special army.
Now tucked against the stone wall was the small town of Badaling. Most of the town served the tourists. Hotels, restaurants, museums, ATV rentals for off road exploring the countryside, stuff like that. On their drive up the mountain, they had passed a bed and breakfast, only the sign said in English, Food and Sleep place. Close enough.
He knew during tourist season the walkways were packed side to side with tourists. Now they were so bare that you could see the cracks in the stone.
The cable car was at the base of the mountain, down by the Great Wall museum. Lopez glanced at his watch, then looked at the schedule posted on the board.
“Looks like it runs on the half hour,” he stated, tapping his toe. The corporal wasn’t known as a big fan of waiting.
“Take a picture for Little Ricky,” Lopez stated to Levont then leaned back against the wall.
Levont snapped several pictures. Then Lopez, of course had to get up onto the top of the wall. “Now! Switch to video for an action shot.”
He jumped up into the air, then slipped on landing. He fell off the side. He would have plummeted the forty or fifty feet down the hill if Prenner hadn’t caught his wrist.
After climbing up back up onto the wall, he smiled. “Did it look like I really fell off?”
“You know it, bro!” Levont replied, all smiles.
Those two had an epic bromance going. They seemed far more gay then Prenner ever did.
“Perhaps more surveillance and less playing for the camera?” Malvern suggested.
“Who said I can’t do both?” Lopez said with a chuckle. “Check out those supposed German tourists over there,” the corporal said nodding at the blond couple down the wall about a hundred meters.
“Come on, that braid style went out with Heidi, who are they trying to fool? They are look outs.”
“How can you be sure?” Malvern asked.
“And look to the north. That family was walking toward the museum when we got here and now they are practically half way down the slope? We’re being monitored,” Lopez stated.
“So perhaps that’s another reason to keep our presence on the down low?” Malvern suggested.
Lopez snorted. “But we want to flush them, don’t we, or this is going to be a really, really long day.”
“Am I seeing things?” Bunny asked as she lowered her binoculars, pointing downslope to the restaurant just to the side of the Great wall museum and the terra cotta display. One of the Ming Dynasty’s largest underground tombs was at the base of the Wall.
“Is that one of the clones?”
Even without looking, Lopez stated, “Told ya.”
Davidson grabbed the binoculars from her and searched the tourist complex, that included a stadium seating movie theater. Though he didn’t expect to find anything, there was a clone, sure enough. His bright blue eyes a stark contrast to the Chinese workers’ dark, almond shaped eyes.
He wore a baseball cap and heavy jacket despite the temperate conditions.
“I think he’s armed,” Davidson stated.
“There’s another one,” Levont stated, indicating toward the Terra Cotta museum.
“We’ve got to get down there,” Prenner said, heading to the SUV. Everyone trotted behind until they realized that Lopez wasn’t following.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the corporal said, nodding his head to the cable car rigging. “When we’ve got this.”
“It’ll be another twenty minutes until the cable car gets here,” Malvern stated, clearly not understanding what Lopez meant. He wasn’t talking about the car, he was talking about the rigging.
Lopez ran over to the SUV popping the back door, searching for rappelling equipment.
“No,” Malvern stated, backing away. “That’s over two hundred feet high. The fall... The drop…”
“Then don’t come,” Lopez said. “But I’m catching me some clones.”
* * *
Bunny watched in horror as Lopez set up their riggings. Well, they weren’t exactly riggings as they were short pieces of chain with rope handles for each of them. Not a whole lot of safety features there.
“Let’s just take the SUV down. We can be there in minutes,” Malvern pleaded.
Lopez shook his head. “We’ll be down there in forty eight seconds versus another seven minutes to make it down the hill and around to the museum.” Lopez pointed to the restaurant. “They are right there, right now.”
Malvern was still trying to talk the corporal out of it, but Bunny knew the sooner that he and she accepted the reality that this was happening, the better it would be for everyone all around.
She put a hand on Malvern’s arm. “Take the SUV down then.”
“Are you coming with me?” the colonel asked.
Bunny shook her head.
The concern was plain on his face. She hated to worry him, but she oddly trusted Lopez.
Taking a step away from the colonel, she tried to smile. “See you down there.”
Whether I’ll be there in one piece or not is another question entirely.
“Fine,” Malvern said. “I’m in.”
Guess he couldn’t let a redhead show him up.
Even though it was Lopez’s idea and he was clearly itching to try it out, Levont was the first one down as always. Point men were point men.
Levont whooped as he slid down the steep cabling. “Off the hook!!”
He zipped down that mountain, his legs straight out in front of him. His exuberant hollering filling the air. Lopez, who in theory should have been last, hopped on next, shouting some kind of adrenaline junkie’s anthem.
Bunny was supposed to be next. She stood teetering on the edge of the wall, doing exactly what she wasn’t supposed to be doing, looking down. Imagining what it would feel like to free-fall to the bottom of the slope.
Davidson wrapped his arms around her, putting his strap over hers. “We’ll go down together.
She wanted to argue. She wanted to assert that she wasn’t a scared little woman who needed protecting. Only she was a woman and for the love of God she did want some protecting right about now. She turned to face him, burying her face in his jacket.
Davidson counted down. “Three. Two. One.”
They both leapt off at the same time, hurtling down cable line. She didn’t open her eyes. Instead she clung to Davidson’s slight but strong frame.
“Almost there,” Davidson reassured her, talking over the wind that was whipping past them.
She could hear Prenner’s shout as he followed. She didn’t hear Malvern, but assumed that he had come as well.
“Tuck your legs up,” Davidson said.
Bunny complied as the sniper took the full weight of the landing on his feet, then slowed them to a stop.
“You can let go now,” Davidson said.
But she didn’t want to let go. Not ever. She felt safer than she had in weeks. However as Lopez would remind her, there were clones to catch.
On wobbly legs she let go of Davidson and took a step back. He helped steady her before unslinging his rifle and heading to the closest guard pavilion. She was sorry to see him go.
Soon Prenner and Malvern were on the ground too.
“That was…” Malvern stuttered. “Absolutely incredible.”
So the legion of Lopez fans had just grown by one. Was there any doubt?
Security guards, shouting a variety of curses in Chinese were running up to them, but once they noticed the guns in the men’s hands, they scattered.
“You realize they are going to call for an armed response,” Malvern stated.
“At this point, we’re probably going to need the guns against the Righteous,” Lopez said. “If it’s the Chinese, then so be it.”
Levont headed down the wall’s rampart at a trot. Everyone else fell in behind. Bunny started getting that light headed feeling each time they went into a possible battle. Was
it courage that blanketed out the fear or just a lack of oxygen? She tried to breath but always found it so difficult in situations like this.
Bunny also did what the soldiers said was “borrowing confidence.” She didn’t have the skill set to survive what ever was about to happen, but the men did and she had to take comfort in that. She also had to be proud that none of the men, not even Malvern tried to talk her out of coming.
They knew whatever they found about the Righteous, they were going to need her. She was at the hub of the information circle.
So she trotted along in formation, waiting for the bullets to start to fly.
* * *
Stark could breathe again. He couldn’t believe they had just zip lined the cable car wires. Levont hadn’t been correct. It wasn’t off the hook. It was insane.
Okay, that confirmed that he was never, ever going out into the field. If that meant never having a shot with Bunny, so be it. He’d seen Davidson’s gallant gesture. He saw how Bunny sank into him. Stark wished it had been him, but he knew if he’d actually been in China, he would have been hiding out in the trunk of the SUV.
And the fact he felt no shame in that, told him fieldwork wasn’t for him. Sorry Bunny.
“I can’t tell where they went,” his mother sighed. “There just isn’t enough coverage to tell for sure.”
Stark was busy trying to retask a South Korean satellite that normally watched over the DMZ. Like they didn’t have a gazillion of those. They could spare one for the team.
“Give me a half an hour and I should have better coverage,” Stark said into the mic.
“A half an hour?” Lopez snorted. “You really are funny.”
All Stark could do was watch as the team advanced on the Terra Cotta warrior museum. They had chased off the guards and most of the meager tourists had fled as well. Cars were pulling out of the parking lot at an alarming rate.
The team was moving at a fast trot, moving directly to the entrance. There were no more signs of the clones.
“Any chance this is a trap?” Malvern asked.
“Oh, only about one hundred percent,” Lopez replied.
And if only Stark could tell what that trap was. But alas, they were blind.
CHAPTER 20
Davidson watched from the highest perch of the gate pavilion. He probably should have stayed up at the top of the cable car line, but he couldn’t take Bunny’s horrified expression.
That shouldn’t matter, but it did. He justified coming down to this level by the fact he had limited visibility of the museum from the top height. Here he might not have the sky view, but he did have far better lateral coverage.
He scanned the area. It was cleared of all non-combatants. He still had to be careful though. An innocent civilian could rush out of any of the buildings at any time. Plus where had the German couple gone? And the older Asian couple? Had they fled with the rest or were they waiting in the wings?
Glancing to his watch, he cringed. They had less than forty minutes to stop the worldwide suicide attack. And given the fact they still didn’t have an actionable plan to stop the attack, forty minutes wasn’t a whole heck of a lot of time.
There. On the other side of the museum complex. Movement. Davidson pushed his face against the scope’s optic. Willing the figure into view.
It was Baasha. He could tell by the man’s stooped posture and oversized glasses.
His finger rested next to the trigger. Take the shot? Or wait and hopefully have Baasha lead them to the true conspiracy?
Davidson didn’t bother to contact Lopez or even Malvern. It was his call and his call alone. They didn’t pay him the big bucks to be indecisive.
The man hobbled across a garden area and reentered the building near the restaurant. Two clones followed, carrying large crates. Davidson could see the glint of gold through the slates. Not Sarin then. More than likely the artifacts from the church in Kashmir.
Now those two he could take out without worry. They were more pack mules than orchestrators.
Two poofs and two men down. There was a slight sound as the containers clanked to the ground, then nothing.
“Baasha has headed into the restaurant, now unguarded.”
Davidson watched as Levont paused, looking like he might change direction, but Lopez urged him forward.
“We are going to sweep and clear the area before we take on Baasha,” Lopez said.
A solid strategy. The worst enemy was the one at your back.
* * *
Even given the circumstances, Bunny wished she could stop and take in the museum around them. There had to be at least a hundred life-sized terra cotta warriors lining the walls of the museum. The detail on each was simply amazing.
Perfect statues meant to keep their emperor safe in the afterlife. Some were standing. Others were kneeling in supplication. There was a chariot being drawn by two terra cotta horses. She reached out and stroked the nose of one of them to be sure they weren’t real.
The men were, of course, scanning between the terra cotta soldiers for real-life clones.
In the meanwhile, Bunny studied the still life forms. Unlike Egyptians who mummified actual soldiers, wives, dogs, cats and priests to protect the pharaohs in the next world, the Chinese had opted for these clay proxies. A much more compassionate choice.
She knew that thousands of these terra cotta figures had been found between the three main Ming tombs that had been discovered in the area. These emperors weren’t joking around. They wanted to dominate in the afterlife as they had in their lives.
So much for not being able to take it with you.
An unusual form was next. That of an acrobat. The lithe figure was leaned back, caught half way in a backbend. She was a snapshot of pure beauty.
“Clear,” Levont announced.
“Is there another way out of here?” Lopez asked into his mic.
“Yes, there is a back door to the right that leads out into a courtyard.”
“Davidson, any movement?” Lopez asked.
“None,” was the answer, then a pause, “Wait. I’ve got a clone with a backpack.”
Lopez frowned. That backpack probably carried Sarin gas.
“Can you safely take a shot?” Lopez asked.
“Not without the danger of him falling backward and smashing that backpack.”
“Copy that,” Lopez replied.
Prenner turned to him. “Plan?”
“Go find out what’s in that backpack,” Lopez said with a smile. Bunny was glad to know someone was happy about this.
* * *
Stark monitored the team’s progress on the screen. Their figures were distorted due to the angle of the Beijing satellite. It was like looking through a house of mirrors as the team burst into the courtyard, startling the clone who then went into full blown par cor ninja clone mode. Leaping onto a table, then onto a ledge, then onto the lower parapet of the wall, then over the wall itself. He ran along the walkway, heading north.
The team charged after him, more conventionally climbing up the wall, with the exception of Lopez who disappeared back into the museum. Where the heck was the corporal going?
There was no time to fret over Lopez’s strange actions as the team gave chase to the lone clone. But the guy was fast and the team was hesitant to fire with the risk of Sarin gas in that backpack.
It seemed inconceivable, but the guy might actually get away.
Then an ATV flew over the side of the wall, racing down the walkway. Stark didn’t need audio to know that Lopez was revving the hell out of the engine. He could see the black smoke of the exhaust pouring from the vehicle unlucky enough to be picked by Lopez.
The team jumped out of the way as Lopez came up behind them, then burst past them. Lopez waved his hand to his team streaking away from them.
Again, another reason Stark would never go into the field.
“We’ve got a problem,” his mother said, pulling Stark’s eyes away from the foot/ATV chase under way.
“Those crates don’t just have artifacts in them,” his mother stated.
“Sarin gas?” Davidson asked sounding a bit apprehensive.
“No,” his mother replied. “C4. A lot of it.”
“Thank God,” Davidson whispered. Stark doubted the man even realized he’d said it out loud.
“So I guess they were planning on blowing something up,” Stark stated. “But what and why?”
“Why even bother to use Sarin gas on this tourist attraction? They would barely have taken out a few hundred people. It doesn’t seem worth the trouble. Compared to way bigger targets in China.”
“Guys, something else is going on here,” Stark announced over the com.
“Like?” Lopez said, barely audible over the scream of his ATV as it climbed the slope up the wall.
“Not sure, but something is seriously off.”
* * *
Davidson would certainly say so. Although right now it was Lopez who was off. Off his rocker. As he bore down on the clone with the backpack, the corporal must have put a stick wedge on the gas pedal at full acceleration, because that was the only speed Lopez traveled at, then climbed up onto the dash of the ATV just as the vehicle was about to strike the man. The clone tried to leap out of the way, but Lopez had anticipated that and jerked the steering wheel over.
The ATV struck the man, but not before Lopez grabbed the pack, pulling it right off the clone’s back. The corporal then proceeded to run over the clone. Gently tossing the pack into the backseat of the ATV, Lopez sat down again, slowing the vehicle to turn back to his teammates.
He was about to make the turn when five gunmen burst from the guard tower, firing away.
Well, at least one of the traps had been sprung. Fortunately they clearly hadn’t planned on Lopez stealing one of the rental ATVs. Ducking under the steering wheel, Lopez plowed into the cluster of clones.
They also didn’t expect a sniper perch either as Davidson took several shots, felling the remaining clones. Fish in a barrel.
Lopez waved to Davidson as he turned the ATV around and headed back to the rest of the team.
Bull's Eye Sniper Chronicles Collection (The Second Cycle of the Betrayed Series) Page 24