The move evidently took Tung’s enforcer by surprise as well, because instead of twisting aside to avoid Michael’s fall, he was set off balance and shoved halfway out the door. His accomplice reached for his weapon, but the Uzi hanging from his left side got caught up in the wheel well. He hesitated and Kate rolled through the gap between the seats. She hauled back with both feet, booting him from the cab. On Michael’s side the driver regained his balance, taking hold of Michael’s hair and yanking him toward the door. Chin down on the seat, Michael eyed the truck keys dangling from the man’s belt as he was pulled inexorably out of the vehicle. Kate must have been thinking the same thing because he felt her slam her body against the backs of his legs, screaming one word.
“Key!”
Michael felt what he thought were Kate’s lips on the back of his wrists. The he heard an enormous groan.
“Pull!”
Michael wrenched at his wrists, finally realizing what Kate was doing. She was biting through the plastic cuffs. Michael could feel them weakening, Kate’s hot saliva dripping down as he stretched the cuffs between his wrists. The plastic was stretching beyond its breaking point. Kate bit down again and the cuffs snapped. Tung’s man was still yanking Michael by the hair, but Michael’s hands were newly free and he reached for the man’s crotch with his left hand and the truck keys with his right. As he did so, he felt Kate kick like a dolphin with both feet out the passenger side door. Her blow must have knocked the Triad guy off his feet for the second time because he heard a moan even before he squeezed the driver’s balls. Michael slammed the door and threw the keys into the ignition.
Kate screamed, “Drive!”
Michael fired up the truck and whatever Kate said next was lost in a burst of machine gun fire. It didn’t matter though. Michael’s feet had already found the pedals. Still lying low, he popped the big rig into gear and hit the accelerator, lurching blindly into the night.
50
MOBI WASN’T DISAPPOINTED, he was devastated. If the Chinese Launch Center was destroyed it meant they had no access to an appropriately encoded transceiver. That in turn meant the clear-code was useless. Which ultimately meant that a lot of innocent people would die. And they would start dying soon. In silent acknowledgment of this fact, Mobi slumped forward and closed his eyes, burrowing his forehead into the metal desk. There was nothing he could do now and he knew it. Rand’s men had recuffed his hands behind his back, seating him as far away from a computer terminal as they could get him. They had then taken up position outside Mission Control’s open exit doors.
To make matters worse, Mobi was now convinced that Alvarez was the mole. Rand had access as well, but Alvarez was the one cozying up to Quiann. Mobi wondered why she had put him in contact with Quiann. Was it to implicate him in her web? Alvarez, meanwhile, stood near the front of Mission Control, sucking back a soda as though she didn’t have a care in the world. He wished he understood her motives, but it didn’t really matter, not anymore.
At least, Mobi thought, he had no family in California. All of his friends were right here at JPL and he hoped they would be able to get on the freeway and out of town, even though he saw no such option for himself. When it was all over, people would be looking for a scapegoat. He’d be dead, but it wouldn’t stop them from blaming him for the dispersal of plutonium into the atmosphere. Or for incinerating half the state. These and a thousand other thoughts plagued Mobi even as he felt the tap on his head. He thought the tap felt like freezing rain. Or hail. No doubt they’d blame him for global warming as well. All on the back of one stupid satellite.
Mobi felt another tap and opened his eyes. But it wasn’t hailing. In fact the only thing that was different was that Alvarez stood much closer than she had before and there were two ice cubes melting into a tiny pool on his desk. Mobi opened his mouth, about to ask Alvarez why she was lobbing ice at him, but instead he followed her gaze to the guards watching them from either door. Alvarez then took out her phone and checked her voicemail, letting the phone hang down in one hand as she walked past Mobi. Mobi had no idea what to think until he read the phone’s screen: “Transceiver acquired. Clear-code?”
Mobi just shook his head. If what Rand had said was true, the clear-code was useless. Then why keep bothering him? Mobi looked away. And in that moment Alvarez tripped, spilling Diet Coke all over him.
“I am so sorry.” Alvarez said. Then she whispered, “We have an agent on the ground. Give me the clear-code, you stubborn-ass, Caltech dork.”
Was she serious? Was she actually bullying him? Still, something about the way she said “dork” made Mobi smile. She might be a traitor, but what kind of traitor talked like that? Maybe he was wrong about her. Mobi just didn’t know. But he did have the clear-code. If there was even a chance he could do some good with it, he decided in that moment it was a chance he would take. Hoping against hope, Mobi dangled all ten fingers behind his chair and carefully signed the seventeen digit clear-code to Alvarez who now stood at the back of the room.
Less than twenty seconds later Alvarez left Mission Control. A minute after that the code was relayed through two commercial communications satellites and back down to an encrypted mobile device in Guanxi Province, China.
51
SOME OF MICHAEL’S dad’s lessons weren’t lessons at all. Like when he taught Michael about family. Family was everything in the Chase home. Even if their home was unconventional. Mom ran most of the show because Michael’s dad had a pretty intensive travel schedule. But when Michael’s dad was there, he was all there. They did things together. They hiked. They swam. They went on family trips. Once, Michael remembered, his dad flew back overnight from Japan, just to see him play Lacrosse. Michael didn’t think he was flying that far just to see him at the time, but when he woke up the next morning, his father was gone. His mom explained that his dad had a very important job to do, but Michael was more important than the job, and he wanted to be there for the game. It was the same thing when Michael broke his leg skiing. His dad was there the next day. Ditto for when he got his appendix out. So even though his dad couldn’t be there all the time, he was there when he needed him. Always. And Michael knew that he would always be there for his dad too. Whatever it took.
KATE HUNG UP the phone. Tung’s man had left it plugged into the dash of the truck and though convenient, Michael was certain it wasn’t secure. Kate, however, didn’t seem overly concerned.
“My people gave me the coordinates of a meeting place not far from here,” Kate said. “A reservoir about ten minutes up the road. They’ll meet us there.”
They had been driving through the night for over half an hour now. There had been no talk of Ted’s betrayal and no talk of what was to come. Kate seemed to have retreated inward and though Michael didn’t mind the silence, it did nothing to set his mind at ease. A satellite was falling out of the sky and he was anxious. Anxious that he would have blood on his hands. Anxious that he had come all this way to fail. And anxious that he would never find out what had happened to his father. For the tenth time in as many minutes Michael hung his wrist out the window to get a signal lock. His GPS indicated that they were still headed southwest toward Vietnam.
“What then?” Michael said.
“What do you mean?”
“You said that if we found the Horten there was a chance we’d be able to communicate with that flying bomb up there. Well, we found the Horten. When we get to the reservoir what happens? What then?”
“They said they’d update us as the situation developed.”
“Is that it?”
Kate could see the pleading in Michael’s eyes. “They said they had information. Information regarding your father.”
Michael was silent for a long moment. “What kind of information?”
There was no reply.
“I said, what kind of information?”
“I don’t know, okay? Ow!” Kate screamed grasping her ear. A high pitched hum filled the cab. Working her thumb and finger into
her left ear, Kate managed to pull out something that looked like a wax ball. “It’s a sub aural receiver. Standard issue. The water in the cave must have shorted it out.”
Kate started to put the receiver back into her ear when a tinny mechanical monotone began echoing a series of numbers as clear as a bell.
“5-6-9-1-2-3-6-8-1-4-6-6-1-7-2-4-3.” The numbers stopped.
“Was that what I thought it was?” Michael said.
“The clear-code,” Kate said. “My people are telling us there’s still a chance we can keep that bird in the sky.”
52
HUANG WAS WELL aware that his operation had careened dangerously off track. He had no doubt that many of his men had been killed, others had been taken prisoner, and his objective, the Horten’s unique reactor, had been snatched from his grasp. But none of this meant that the mission was lost. Not yet at least. He still had good intelligence on the American efforts to destroy the satellite. More important than that however, he believed he knew who the gunmen were. Even before setting out, he had been warned that a particular Triad organization might have a vested interest in the Horten. And now, given the evening’s events it was obvious that the warning had held true. Huang had seen the Horten barged out of the blasted cave and down the river with his own eyes. Now it was time to do something about it.
Still in possession of his secure Motorola, Huang’s first action had been to contact Guilin station. From there a Bell 460 helicopter armed with an M27 mini-gun had been dispatched to pick him up. He had then made a second call to place informants on all the riverbank landing points for a hundred kilometers south of Yangshuo. Huang knew it would be suicide for the Triad to travel the river in the light of day. They would be seen and hence had no choice but to leave the river before daybreak. And given that there were no rail lines within convenient reach, to leave the river meant a tractor trailer large enough to transport the Horten.
In a stroke of good fortune, Huang’s quick response to the situation had already garnered a hit — a suspicious truck had left the river following the old Guanxi highway south. Satellite services had since identified that it was carrying a wing shaped load approximately twenty meters in length. What this told Huang was that he had effectively reacquired the Horten. And even as he tried to not be unduly influenced by the optimism welling within him, he felt his pulse quicken. The American spy wouldn’t get by him again.
53
THE LAST MILE or so had been uphill. Michael and Kate had turned off the main artery onto a dirt road leading into the hinterland. The road had deteriorated to the point where it was little more than a dirt track. Then, that too had given way, leaving them in a rolling meadow surrounded by karsts. Michael stopped the truck, checking the coordinates Kate had given him against his GPS. They were there. An emerald shaped reservoir, indistinguishable from a natural lake, lay just below them. They were alone up here, or at least they appeared to be.
“You say we’re going to meet your people here?”
“That’s what they said.”
Michael knew that time was running out. And he knew he had a mission to complete. But he also knew that this was the moment he had been waiting for; his single best chance to finally learn what had happened to his father. He would be a fool to turn his back on that opportunity now. Michael decided he could manage the risks. Leaving the headlights on, he pulled the keys from the ignition and followed Kate out of the truck and down the bank to the water’s edge. Given the course of the last few hours, he was well aware that the bucolic beauty around him could erupt into a blood bath within seconds and as such he did everything in his power to remain vigilant.
“They said wait?”
“Wait and they’d meet us here,” Kate said.
Michael glanced at his watch. The cicada’s song carried over the cool lake breeze did little to calm him. If he had to wait much longer, it would all be over.
“Your father was a worthy adversary.”
Michael spun around. The words hadn’t come from Kate who remained beside him, lips pursed shut, eyes wide in the moonlight. They had come from the bank above, near the truck. Michael craned his neck, but could see nothing in the darkness.
Kate put her arm out, barring Michael’s movement. “Follow my lead,” she said quietly.
But the only lead Michael was following was his own. He pushed Kate’s arm aside, striding up the bank toward the truck. Not much of anything was visible in the shadows even with the headlights shining. Then the woman walked into the light. Michael had seen her before, but now he was seeing her with new eyes. Young, pretty and innocent, it was their bicycle tour guide from Yangshuo. Ester. Michael noted that she didn’t appear to be holding a weapon, at least not one that was drawn. He took a moment to slow his racing pulse.
“What do you know about my father?”
“I know that he was good at his work.”
“What else?”
“I know that he did not choose his friends wisely.”
“And?”
“I know that neither do you.”
Michael was within ten feet of Ester now. He watched her eyes. They were young and dark, but they weren’t focused on him. Not even close. They stared beyond Michael. Through him really, back down the bank to Kate. Michael turned to her. Her gaze conferred a softness he had not yet been privy too.
“I’m sorry, Michael.”
He turned back to Ester. She had taken a step forward and now aimed an antique German Luger straight at his chest. It was an old weapon to be sure, but it still shot standard 9mm rounds. An encounter with it would be fatal.
“What do you want?” Michael asked.
Ester motioned him toward the truck. The plate steel utility box sat nearest the cab, bolted to the I-beam frame of the trailer.
“I want you,” Ester said, “to get in the box.”
Michael, unsure if he had heard her correctly didn’t move. Ester repeated herself.
“I said, get in the box.”
Michael risked a backward glance. The utility box was perhaps six feet in length and two and half in width, a couple of feet deep at most. It was made of forge hardened diamond plate steel and one thing Michael was absolutely certain of was that he would not get inside of it. Not without a fight anyhow. But he needed a plan. He needed to buy time and already Ester was backing him toward the box where it sat welded to the frame of the trailer immediately below the leading edge of the Horten’s wing. As Ester backed him up, Michael noted that in addition to the Luger in her left hand, she carried a double barreled sawed-off shotgun, a twelve gauge by the looks of it, hanging from a leather shoulder loop inside her coarse wool jacket.
“The old man in the village. You shot him before he could talk.”
“Yes,” Ester said.
Michael considered the implication. “Is that what you did to my father?”
Ester smiled. “Your father was a brave man. That is all you need to know.”
“Where is he?”
There was no response.
“Shoot me if you want, but you will tell me where he is.”
Michael’s command was answered by a cellular beep. Ester carefully ended the ring with a touch to the phone on her belt.
“There is no time. Turn around.”
Michael was loathe to do so, but he didn’t think she was going to execute him. Not if she was still talking about the box. He risked turning ninety degrees and as he did, Ester reached into her pocket, removing what looked like a flash memory card. She held it in the air.
“The account details are saved on the card,” she said to no one in particular. “They will be useless without remote activation which I will provide upon the successful completion of my mission.”
Kate stepped up the bank. “That wasn’t part of our agreement.”
“You were to deliver the aircraft alone.”
Ester stepped to the side and jabbed the barrel of the Luger into Michael’s back. He found himself wishing she’d stuck it in the back
of his head. His father had always told him that contrary to popular opinion, the back of the head wasn’t the worst place a gun could go. With a gun to the back of your head, a quick turn to the left or right, dramatically increased the odds of a flesh wound, the bullet skirting your skull mostly harmlessly. With the gun in his back, Michael knew that his soft organs would be vulnerable if he tried to move. An escape attempt now would result in at least a pierced lung. Probably worse. He stalled for time.
“What was it, Kate? Why’d you sell me out?”
“Make it easy on yourself, Michael. Do as she says.”
Michael stood tight against the trailer now, the cold steel utility box at eye level. He still felt the Luger at his back, but he was hopeful. She couldn’t keep the gun parked there forever, not the way he saw it. He placed both hands down and pulled himself up onto the steel frame of the trailer. The semi trailer had no deck, only two long I-beams which composed the length upon which cargo was fastened. The box was welded down where the I-beams met an orthogonal strut.
“Lift the lid.”
Pistol still trained on him, Michael forced any thought of Kate from his mind. If he was going to survive he needed to focus. He knew that. It wasn’t the time to consider how he had gotten into this situation — it was the time to get out of it. Michael reached down for the lid of the box. It was heavy as he expected. Inside was a collection of the tarps and fasteners used to secure cargo. Michael could feel Ester’s gun trained on his back, but he thought if he could leap across the width of the trailer, from one I-beam to the next, he might be able to take cover behind the Horten’s landing gear. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was something. Still, he needed a diversion. Anything to buy him another second.
Lethal Circuit (Michael Chase 1) Page 21