Lethal Circuit (Michael Chase 1)

by Guignard, Lars

  “The pilot. You know him.”

  “He’s done one other pick up for me before. That’s it. Luck of the draw.”

  Michael thought about it. “Okay, fine.” He adjusted his position bringing himself even closer, his forearm bearing down just a little harder. Hard enough to make her think about her next answer. “You want to find my father and the pilot thing is a fluke.” Michael torqued Kate’s head to the side with his left arm just enough to remind her that he was in control. He eyed the capsule. “What,” he said, “is that? And don’t give me any shit about you not being sure. I saw your eyes light up when I found it. You know exactly what it is.”

  Kate coughed. “The capsule is a marker,” she said. “In addition to the two full-size Hortens hidden somewhere in China, two metal capsules were engraved with relevant information as to their whereabouts. We think the idea was that should the location of the Horten aircraft ever become lost due to the misplacement or destruction of documents, these capsules could fill the gap. Engravings of regional topography would lead the bearer to the Horten’s hiding spot. Flash forward six decades. A badly damaged Horten was located by two Chinese farmers approximately five years ago. They found it with the help of a capsule marker like this one.”

  “So what you’re saying is, this saucer thing is going to lead you to the second Horten. The one my father was supposedly looking for? The one they haven’t found yet?”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “Makes sense,” Michael said. “So why do you need me?”

  “What do you want me to tell you? You’re a resource, Michael. You know your father. You know how he thinks. With your help I’ll have a better chance of getting this done. And like it or not, it works for you too. Finding the Horten is your best chance of finding your dad. I want your help to find the both of them.”

  Michael was quiet for a long time. The roar of wind in the fuselage seemed to have lessened, but more than likely he had simply grown inured to its pounding. He released his hold on Kate and got up, offering her his hand. Kate took it, cracking her neck as she did so. Then she rose, straightening her blouse before looking Michael in the eye.

  “You owed me for that little shove I gave you back at the temple, so I guess we’re even, but make no mistake. If you ever, and I mean ever, pull something like that again, I will not take it laying down. Understood?”

  “Lie to me again and I won’t be so friendly. Sound fair?”

  “Perfectly.”

  Michael reached down and handed Kate back her gun. “Now, where in sweet China are we going?”

  Kate smiled. “I’m so glad you asked.”

  17

  SOMEWHERE IN RURAL GUANXI PROVINCE

  THE BLACK LIMOUSINE traveled swiftly through the night, its armor plated panels designed to provide the ultimate in peace of mind to the occupant within. Yet despite the safety features of his executive transport, Li Tung felt a growing constriction in his chest, a constriction he hadn’t felt in the entire length of his seventy-six-year criminal career. Li was concerned. One of his key men had just informed him that the pick up at the Shenzhen airfield had been successful, but barely so. The decoy pilot had been hospitalized and would surely be interrogated if he could not be pried from the Ministry’s grasp. The MSS was close behind, closer than they had planned, and Li knew there was too much at stake for events not to unfold exactly as scheduled. But these thoughts would have to wait. The limo had slowed, turning onto a wide shoulder on the side of the road. As the car stopped, Li could just make out the dim outline of a single tractor trailer in the moonlight. Li thought to himself that, regardless of the outcome, the mission was bigger than just him now. It had begun.

  • • •

  THE AIRFIELD WAS little more than a dirt strip beside a country road. There were a few old burnt out military planes and a couple slightly more modern private aircraft, but it was dark and difficult to see much else. Whatever the case, this was no Chek Lap Kok. Air traffic control was no more than a guard at a windsock. Absent a set of stairs, Michael and Kate leapt the few feet down from the open cargo hold to the dirt runway below. Pulling the capsule out behind them, they carried it several paces in silence without drawing any attention, not even from the lone guard.

  “Where are we?”

  “Guanxi Province. Four hundred miles northwest of Shenzhen.”

  Ahead was a ten by ten concrete block shed locked down by a beat-up metal roller door. An outdoor lamp buzzing with insects and the high hum of electricity provided the only illumination. There was a well-used payphone bolted to the side of the building, but little else; no people, no vehicles, not a single sign to remind Michael they were standing in the heart of the most populous country on Earth. A one yuan coin in hand, Kate lifted the receiver of the phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Dialing a cab.”

  Michael placed a finger on the phone, cutting off the line, the open dial tone just audible above the buzz.

  “I need to make a call first,” he said.

  “Hold on,” Kate said. “We call a cab, we can get out of here. We start dialing across the country, it’s going to attract attention.”

  “Like the attention you brought down on us?”

  Kate was silent.

  “No more lies, remember? They knew we were at Chen’s.”

  “Okay. I put in a call to Six before we broke into his apartment. But my line was at least supposed to be secure. If that was the Ministry behind us, you don’t think they’ve got fifteen supercomputers filtering for our voice prints right now?”

  “I’ll be quick,” Michael said, dropping Kate’s coin into the phone.

  • • •

  TED FAIRFIELD WAS anxious. His evening the night before had been everything he had expected under the circumstances and more. The police had rounded up and questioned everyone at the restaurant keeping him at the Yau Ma Tei police station well into the next morning. Ted was surprised by both the speed and zeal of the police response given that the incident had occurred at Chungking, but when he learned that a fully vested Triad member was also a victim, their interest made sense. Their concern was no doubt part of an ongoing investigation into the gang’s hierarchy rather than any sense of duty to maintain law and order in Chungking.

  Ted’s anxiety, however, was not a manifestation of the previous evening’s events. He was worried about Michael. Prior to Michael’s arrival in Hong Kong, they had made a clear plan to meet at 9:00 p.m. the next night at the Forum hotel in Shenzhen. Besides being a favorite of Ted’s, it would allow Michael a gentle introduction to the People’s Republic. Ted was well aware that Michael had experienced adversity in the past. His experience had changed him, hardened him to the point that Ted was fairly certain that Michael was quite capable of looking after himself wherever he was. But Ted also knew that this was China. And China presented its own set of challenges.

  So far, however, Michael hadn’t shown up and as things stood it didn’t look like he was going to. Ted’s rendezvous with Michael had been very specific. If he couldn’t make the meeting, he was to place a call to the payphone outside the barbershop adjacent to the hotel. That the barbershop was really a brothel disguising its trade with a cheap façade and a striped pole made little difference. It was nearly five hours later and there had still been no call. Ted was about to give up when the brothel’s wizened Madame, with whom he had been sharing the payphone, handed him the line.

  “Where have you been?” Ted said.

  “Seven-seven-seven,” Michael replied.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Seven-seven-seven.”

  And the line went dead. Ted cursed to himself and handed the phone back to the tired Madame.

  “Thank you,” he said in flawless Cantonese.

  Seven-seven-seven. Screw the budget, Ted thought. Screw the backpackers too. He’d been seated ramrod straight in a cracked plastic chair listening to tired prostitutes squeal about how cheap their johns were for th
e last five hours. All things being equal, he intended to spend what was left of the night dead to the world on a clean firm mattress. Ted dragged his weary bones into the expansive lobby of the Forum hotel and within five minutes he was headed up the glass elevator to his room. He couldn’t be happier to be done for the evening.

  • • •

  COOL BREEZE IN his hair, cab speeding through the night, Michael had to admit that life, for the moment at least, was good. They had been traveling along the same rutted road for over an hour now and though the taxi driver was short on conversation he apparently had a limitless supply of ice cold Tsingtao Lager. And though perhaps problematic in the way of safety, the beer was such a balm to Michael’s parched throat that he chose not to over think the matter. Outside, bicycle rickshaws pulled their massive loads, men played cards under lantern light, and whole families gathered around cooking fires, dark mountains looming in the distance above. Even the air out here in the country smelled sweeter, somehow more primal than Michael remembered it being just a few hours earlier.

  “Pull?” Michael asked, offering Kate the tall bottle.

  “Seven-seven-seven?”

  Michael passed Kate the beer as he pulled the Lonely Planet Guide from the top flap of his backpack. He turned to page 777, reading from the page, “Yangshuo, ninety minutes south of Guilin. That’s where we’re headed, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So Ted kind of feels responsible for me over here. I promised I’d keep him in the loop.”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Good.”

  Less than ten minutes later, the cab turned in front of a group of structures built at an intersection in the road. A few hundred yards more and they came to a stop before a timber frame building identifying itself as the Whispering Bamboo Backpacker’s Hostel.

  • • •

  FOUR TIME ZONES away, Hayakawa stared down from his walnut paneled boardroom into the early morning streets of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district below. A second phone call had arrived. It indicated that a Chinese cargo plane had deviated from its prescribed flight path, landing in Guanxi province. The deviation was recorded and per procedure, the MSS was notified. Twenty-six minutes later two individuals meeting the profile boarded a taxi bound for Yangshuo. Hayakawa had not thanked the caller. He had simply replaced the phone in its cradle and considered the content of the call.

  This time, Hayakawa thought, there was a real chance that the object would be found. And that was not something he could allow to happen. Not now that they were so close to their goal. Hayakawa exhaled slowly, reminding himself that he was more than simply the CEO of one of Japan’s leading heavy industries. He was the leader of an even older consortium. His father before him had also been leader of this consortium. And his ancestors before that had been samurai. And so, like all good samurai, Hayakawa reflected that rising stakes served only to make the victory sweeter. Preparations had been made. The course had been set. All that was left now was to follow through.

  18

  YANGSHUO

  SOFT MORNING SUNLIGHT filtered in through the slatted window, but Michael’s mind was on his aching back. His bed for the night had been about as comfortable as a wood pile. On the plus side the spartan room was clean, but it wasn’t much consolation for his sore spine. He gazed across the gap to the second single bed. It was empty, indicating that Kate had already gotten up. Time to rise. Michael pulled his legs out of his sleeping bag and threw them over the side of the bed.

  “Ow!” Kate moaned as he stepped on her sleeping bag shrouded form.

  “What are you doing on the floor?”

  “It’s more comfortable than that bed. What time is it?”

  Michael glanced at the watch on his wrist to discover that he hadn’t reset it since leaving Seattle.

  “I’m thinking breakfast time.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  • • •

  MICHAEL’S BODY WAS sore but his spirit was rested, and after throwing a sheet over the capsule and securing the door of the room with a padlock, they stumbled down the chipped stone steps and into the new day. A few early rising backpackers were already out and about and one thing was clear to Michael: he had stepped into a new world, a world he could have scarcely imagined existed if he wasn’t standing smack dab in the middle of it. What had been shadows in the dark night, had now, under the magic light of day been transformed into mountainous green hills. But they weren’t ordinary hills. They were jutting vertical towers that popped out of the landscape in all directions like a gang of angry gum drops; soaring dollops of vegetation encrusted earth that would look more at home in middle earth than modern day China. And at the end of the street, a magnificent river glistened jade green in the morning light, the same crazy hills rising from its loamy banks, fishing boats crowded around a tiny pier. It was a scene right out of Wonderland.

  “Like the landscape?” Kate asked.

  “Yeah, it’s so —”

  “Surreal?” Kate said.

  “Sugar coated. The mountains look like, I don’t know, emerald green cotton candy.”

  “They call them karsts. But, yeah, this place has that effect on people.”

  Michael soon discovered that in addition to its spectacular limestone karsts, Yangshuo was known for a second attribute, its food. Or to put it more specifically: the best Western food east of Bangkok. Teahouse after teahouse advertised banana pancakes, Western omelets and grilled cheese sandwiches, all to be consumed under the mellowing influence of Bob Marley, the Eagles and a hundred other old school acts. Michael and Kate wasted no time stepping onto the veranda of a tea house named Yangshuo Bob’s and sinking into its richly padded bamboo furniture. Almost immediately a young Chinese hostess appeared with two hand drawn menus. Kate didn’t need to look at hers.

  “Tell Bob I’ll go for the muesli. And a large milk coffee.” Kate looked to Michael. “The banana pancakes are famous in forty countries.”

  “And a banana pancake,” Michael said. “And another coffee.”

  Michael felt briefly self-conscious of the fact that he had been in China for thirty-six hours and had yet to eat a meal of actual Chinese food, but he let it go. If there was one thing Michael knew, it was that the most expeditious route between two points didn’t always involve a straight line. More often than not you had to roll with what came. The hostess smiled and returned a few moments later with two steaming mugs of coffee and Kate’s muesli. Apparently the banana pancake was going to take a few more minutes, but Michael didn’t care. His attention was focused on the street outside where vendors set up their carts selling everything from vegetables to Hollywood movies. Alongside them backpackers of every ilk, some worn from travel, others spiffy clean in their Gore-Tex caps and Northface cargo shorts, crawled out of their guest houses to life. Like a slow wave, the teahouses up and down the street filled with them, a displaced expatriate community who had found a common home, at least for the moment, in this storybook corner of China.

  “You look confused,” Kate said.

  “Let’s go with curious.”

  “Curious then.”

  “It’s nothing, it’s just that, when you said this place was on the Circuit, I didn’t expect it to be so,” Michael struggled to find the right word, “on the Circuit.”

  “They come from everywhere. The year before college. The year after college. The year before grad school. In between jobs. In the UK they call it a gap year. I forget what you guys call it.”

  “Slacking off?” Michael said. “And believe me, I know. Since college I’ve done two tours of duty at Starbucks with a stab at Internet entrepreneurship wedged between mystery shopper gigs. When it comes to the art of the slack, I’m a master.”

  “So would you prefer people laze about locally? Contribute to their hometown angst instead of traipsing off to the far corners of the Earth?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got no problem with seeing th
e world. I just didn’t realize the whole world was doing it.”

  Michael’s banana pancake arrived, succulent pieces of fried banana poking their heads out of the lightly fried batter, a swirl of whip cream with blueberries on the top. Michael wasted no time digging in, pausing long enough between mouthfuls to say, “Damn that’s good.” What he didn’t expect was a heavily accented reply in return.

  “Yes, they are very tasty.”

  Michael looked up from his pancake at an attractive young Chinese woman with a friendly face, a wide-brimmed straw hat covering her head. She wore sandals and stained blue trousers, a man’s white shirt covering her torso and a devil may care glimmer in her eye.

  “My name is Ester,” the woman continued. “May I be your guide today?”

  19

  ESTER TURNED OUT to be a college student studying in nearby Guilin who worked as a guide in her native Yangshuo on break. After some quiet back and forth, Michael had agreed with Kate that a local might just be of some help, especially if they were looking for a particular peak as the engravings on the rim of the capsule suggested. So, after finishing their breakfast, Michael and Kate returned to the hostel where they examined the inscriptions. Looking at the capsule now, Michael admired the finely cut beauty of its craftsmanship. Though it appeared to be no more than a shell, the karst-shaped engravings had obviously been etched by the hand of a master metal worker.

  After carefully photographing the engravings, they then took the precaution of hiding the capsule. After a few minutes searching, a spot was found under the cowling of a disconnected metal swamp fan on the building’s roof. The metal enclosure had a rusty hasp which Kate then secured with another padlock. It wouldn’t stop anyone who actually knew where to look, but Michael thought it was about as good a hiding place as they would find under the circumstances. From there they joined Ester at a bicycle stall in the street below. She had already arranged for the rental of a pair of well-used mountain bikes and within moments they were pedaling after her up West Street and into the countryside beyond.