by Andy Lucas
'Is that ever going to be enough?' she wondered. 'What about your friend?'
'I think you should forget about building bridges that are burned way beyond repair,' Hammond suggested. 'He doesn't know Doyle McEntire as well as I do and he's never met Barbara Balvenie. James just thinks they were both crazy to let you off the hook.'
'Well,' Rachel sighed, 'if someone has been able to take Barbara down then I will be tangling with them soon enough. Neither of you may have to suffer me for too long.'
Returning from the cockpit, coming in on the tail end of their exchange, Pace drained his glass and resumed his seat. Picking up a crisp copy of the new Karen Perkins thriller; another author he admired, he cast a cursory glance down at the inert form of Hill.
'You have checked that I didn't kill him, haven't you?' he questioned. 'The man's a fool but our cover might be a bit difficult to maintain if we land with a dead archaeologist on board.'
'He's alive,' assured Hammond. 'But you hit him pretty hard. He'll be out for an hour or more.'
'And you won't be his favourite person when he does,' said Rachel.
'My heart bleeds,' retorted Pace. 'I want to grab a few pages of my book. Give me a couple of hours and then we could have some sandwiches and go over the plan one more time, what do you think?' His question was levelled at both of them and he received two nods of agreement. Hammond went up the front to speak with the pilots and Rachel became engrossed in her tablet computer, expertly using sweeps and strokes to draw down secure data about their landing site and travel arrangements. It also meant they did not have to speak to each other.
Pace struggled to get into the story. It was a great read, he was sure, but his mind kept flitting back to Sarah. Though he was relieved to know that she was going to be okay, with no lasting effects, it was a chilling reminder about how exposed she was to attack. Coming in the holiday season, she had felt so relaxed that she had dropped her guard, especially as she came in sight of the McEntire building. She had not even taken her gun along. Next time, he knew, someone might kill her.
McEntire would, of course, redouble security for his key people but being involved with the security side meant she would always be a potential target for every enemy they encountered. How could he cope with that? How could she? Did she even realise how much danger she might be in, now that she was up to her neck in the covert operations? One thing he knew for sure was that he did not want to lose her.
Ever.
19
Kwong had just experienced the worst three hours of his life. Since arriving at the mountain facility, deep beneath the snow and ice, his brief nap had been rudely interrupted by an emergency call from the security chief.
'With only one way in and out, and nobody knowing what we're doing anyway, what can be so important as to wake me up?' he muttered to himself as he exited his room and made his way angrily to the control room. Upon arrival, he was ushered into a small, side room, to be confronted by a horrific sight.
A slender woman, with grey hair, sat slumped in a chair. Moaning, barely conscious, she was only prevented from falling to the floor by several loops of cord that tied her to the chair back. Caucasian, in her sixties Kwon guessed, the woman was a mess. Her hair was matted with encrusted blood and her eyes were swollen shut.
The woman's lower lip was slip in two places and fresh blood dripped from her nose to drop steadily onto her green jumper. A white parka, complete with furry hood and white snow trousers, completed her attire. At some point, she would have been wearing something on her feet but not now. Her feet were bare and filthy; also cut and stained with blood.
'What is the meaning of this?' he demanded, in Chinese. 'Who is this person and why is she tied to a chair, half dead?'
'A spy,' reported his security chief proudly. 'Caught outside, monitoring the entrance area. She might have been there for some time. She's not a tourist who just got lost in the snow,' he added coldly. 'She was well dug in and resourced.'
The chief; a small, wiry man by the name of Ling, then went on to explain how the captive had been spotted by a random thermal sweep. For some reason, her almost perfectly concealed tent, buried under the snow, had been spotted at exactly the moment that the sensors on one of their high-altitude security drones was running its standard sweep. A patrol had then surprised her, intending to bring her easily back into the base.
'Why is she so badly injured?' Kwon pressed him.
'Our team went out with six people and returned with only two,' Ling felt that was enough of an explanation. 'Whoever she is, my men said they have never experienced such a fight. She shot two and killed two others with her bare hands before they managed to get a Taser dart into her. They could have shot her but they had strict orders to bring whoever they found in, alive, for questioning. They showed considerable,' he paused for the right word, 'restraint.'
Kwon regarded the bloody mess in front of him and wondered how two people could have such a different view of what restraint actually meant. But, he had to concede, if she had murdered four of the facility security team, she would have to pay for it.
'Have you alerted the company yet?'
'No, of course not. You are the principal party member here, sir. I answer to you first. If you wish to notify central office, that is your decision, not mine.'
Kwon breathed out a sigh of relief. That, at least, was one thing to be grateful for. The last thing he needed was any form of government interference while the project was at such a crucial stage. They would send interrogators and need statements; torture was likely to follow for the poor woman. It was something he decided would be best to delay, if he could.
'Did your men get anything out of her at all, apart from her blood?' he asked. 'Anything at all?'
Ling shook his head solemnly. 'Not even a rank and serial number so she's clearly not with any country's military. If she was, that information alone would have spared her such punishment.'
'Was there any sign of any others out there? Companions?'
'No, sir. We swept the entire perimeter with drones and foot patrols. We were very thorough. She was alone.'
'We cannot take the risk that she's not the scout for a larger team,' Kwon decided quickly. 'Get an extra team of guards sent down here from Beijing as quickly as possible. Tell them the extra manpower is needed due to the project nearing a critical phase.' It wasn't a lie. 'Do not inform them of the deaths, or our guest.'
'Understood,' stated Ling officiously. 'What would you like me to do with her?'
Kwon knew it would be safer, and easier, to kill her and dump her body out by the perimeter of the entrance tunnel. The heavy winter snows would soon cover her corpse and nobody would ever find her again.
'Killing her would be the kindest thing.' As a scientist, Kwon had no real stomach for violence but had grown used to its value in keeping people in line. 'I need to know who she is and who sent her. I don't care how you get her to tell you, just make sure you get the information. You have twenty-four hours.'
'If she won't talk?'
'Keep doing what you're good at until she cracks, or dies. Just keep it away from me, and the rest of the team. I do not want anyone's focus being compromised by screams or the sound of breaking bones, understood?'
Ling did. 'The security communications room is at the far end of one of the corridors. The walls have thicker sound-proofing than the other rooms. I will persuade her to talk in there. You will not be interrupted in your work, I assure you.'
'Very good. Get on with it then, as will I.'
Leaving the room, glad to breathe air that did not coat his tongue with the faint taste of copper, Kwon returned to his room, mainly to think. He could have headed straight to the main laboratory but he needed to gather himself first.
Ling ordered two security guards to untie his victim, who he had no idea was Barbara Balvenie. He led the way down several passageways until he arrived at the main communications room, the guards dragging their cargo along like a ragdoll; her legs dr
agging behind her, clearly unconscious.
Once inside, Ling dismissed the men, ordering them to wait outside until summoned. They dumped the woman unceremonially on the floor, where her head smacked down with sickening thud. He winced involuntarily before using the steel-capped toe of his military boot to flip her over onto her back. The body rolled without resistance, blood still leaking from her nose.
For a second, Ling thought that she might have died but a close inspection of her jumper showed very faint signs of breathing. The spy deserved to be tortured and executed, however, Ling knew his duty and he prided himself on always getting everything right. His first job was to make sure she did not, in fact, die. He had been given a challenge by his superiors; to find out everything he could about the unconscious woman.
Ling pulled her up onto a metal chair and tied her up again before pulling out a small medical kit from its box on the wall and setting to work.
20
The Falcon had been and gone, leaving the McEntire team in the arrivals lounge of very small airport a few hundred kilometres from their target area, called Chiha. The remainder of the journey would be by helicopter and, very thoughtfully, one sat snugly inside one of the snow-buried side hangers. Rented for two weeks, fuelled and ready to go, it was an old Lynx, painted in the bright red livery of mountain rescue, lovingly maintained over three decades.
Typically only used a tourist carrier in the summer months when the snows cleared at the lower elevations, a rental in winter was unheard of. Occasionally, it had been used as an emergency vehicle, ferrying climbers off the nearby mountains, which was why it was always kept at flying readiness.
In reality, the airport's civilian operators usually locked the hangar for up for four months and forgot about it. It was all they could do to keep the single runway free from snow and ice, year round, but they were obliged to do so by the government. Being so close to popular climbing areas, several airports in the region were paid to keep a helicopter available and forced to stay open in winter in case the military needed to mount any kind of rescue operation.
Fortunately, they did not require a pilot and Pace found himself smiling for the first time in hours as the huge steel door was slid back to reveal a machine that he was very familiar with. As one of best Lynx pilots in the RAF, in his day, he adored the machine. It was fast, versatile and highly manoeuvrable.
He knew its systems like the back of his hand so there would be no need for him to dig out the operating manual. In fact, it took longer for them to trudge through the thick surface snow to reach the hangar than it did to stow all their gear while Pace ran through the pre-flight checks.
Every light lit up as it should and every dial sat in the green. There were two seats in front, as he expected, but the rear was an empty shell. A couple of lightweight stretchers sat on the floor and a small winch protruded from above the port rear door. That was as far as creature comforts went for the passengers in the rear. There were no seats, not even fold-down ones, so a very groggy Hill and a determined Rachel squatted down on the floor, moving the stretchers over to one side, while Hammond joined Pace in the cockpit. Assuming the co-pilot's seat, he found himself grinning with anticipation.
'The snow is being kind to us,' he began lightly. 'Weather report says the cloud is going to remain high for the rest of the day.' It was mid afternoon by the time they were ready to set off, with at least three flying hours ahead of them.
'No sense in hanging around then,' agreed Pace. 'How is Hill taking the news about his team?'
Hammond chuckled aloud. When he had recovered, after throwing up a few times into a plastic bag from the mild concussion Pace had handed him, Hill had been told the news that had made him even more upset. He'd been led to believe, by Baker, that all three of the others would be helping him find the lost village. Instead, he just got Pace.
'He'll be okay as long as you don't deck him again.' Hammond gave a thumbs up to a couple of disgruntled airport workers, dragged from their warm staff canteen to come and clear the snow clear from the area in front of the hanger. It wasn't hard work because they were using a small tractor, towing a snow blower, but the temperature was well below freezing and they hated having their lazier winter schedule interrupted.
Five minutes later, pulling the Lynx out and clear of the hangar using the same tractor unit, they uncoupled themselves and drove back to the small terminal building without giving a backwards glance, or wave.
'Charming characters,' commented Rachel, sticking her head in between the men to watch their vehicle leave. She looked up at the clear blue sky and marvelled at the high, snow-encrusted peaks that seemed to completely surround them. She knew, in reality, that they were many miles away.
'Right, get back there and settle down,' ordered Pace, taking immediate command. 'Try to balance the weight so that you're not both on one side. It will help with handling, especially when we get higher and run into some of the nasty cross-winds they get up in between the peaks.'
Nodding, Rachel returned to the rear and made sure that she and Hill sat on opposite sides. He still looked very sheepish, and a little green around the gills, so she was pleased to see him still holding a plastic bag. She did not enjoy the prospect of him throwing up for the entire flight. Calling out when they were settled, she hugged her knees and watched as Pace's hands flew professionally over the controls.
Bringing the engines up to speed, he engaged the rotors and the helicopter lifted smoothly into the air, the familiar thump of its blades biting the frigid air was sheer music to Pace's ears.
'Okay, Max. Let's go. I'm going to stick to the valleys as far as possible. Climb up steadily. Most of the peaks are low enough, at this point, for us to get over if we have to but we are running quite heavy with four passengers and all the gear. I'd rather not take any chances.'
'You're dropping us off well below this machine's ceiling altitude,' said Hammond. 'Then you and Hill are dropping down to where he thinks that village might be.' He listened to the regular roar of the engine. 'It sounds like it's got a good heart.'
Pace was in his element, spinning the machine expertly on the spot before opening the throttle and beginning a slow, circling climb out of the airport. No aircraft were scheduled in or out so he took the opportunity of getting up to three thousand feet before heading away from the airport.
The flight was uneventful, allowing Pace to free his mind of its usual concerns and simply focus on the joy of handling the old helicopter. His experienced ears constantly monitored for sounds of mechanical failure but the two Rolls-Royce Gem turboshaft engines ran sweetly.
The electronics were minimal; as a very early model of the Lynx, but there was a portable GPS system bolted onto the control panel, powered by a taped electrical lead that disappeared beneath his knees somewhere. It was not a pretty job but the system worked well enough, guiding him unerringly towards their destination, squawking warnings and updates at him in a very tinny approximation of a female voice.
In the clear conditions, the mountains they headed up looked as majestic as every description, by every visiting poet, had ever been penned. The ancient range was known mainly for Everest but contained hundreds of high, towering peaks. It was a rare winter's day, to be so clear. Heavy snowfall, for weeks, coated the lower meadowland and more so the broadleaf forest as they navigated their way up through gorges and valleys, steadily gaining altitude and passing closer to the disputed border between China, India and Tibet.
Long fought over, effectively settled by the imposition of the McMahon Line in 1914, the area they were heading towards remained largely deserted due to the harsh conditions, especially higher up. In the middle elevations, small, isolated garrisons of both Chinese and Indian troops were known to be operating, supplied by air.
Pace remembered the two superpowers had even been to war, back in the sixties, over where the border between them should lie. India had lost the battle but ended up having a large area of what was now Southern Tibet ceded to its author
ity.
Luckily, the area Hill planned to search was well off any beaten track. The long-abandoned village of Bruk, if it could be found, had been well charted on old maps so they had a good idea of where to look. It was fifty miles away from the nearest settlement, as the crow flew, which translated into many days of hard trekking on foot. As far as they knew, according to Hill's research, no human had bothered setting foot there for over a century.
Hammond would face a very different situation. He was going with Rachel to try and find out what had happened to Barbara, as well as gathering any information they could about the facility she had been monitoring. This was also in a remote area, inside China, which meant they definitely could not afford to get caught. Despite its carefully crafted public face and multi-billion dollar trading relationships with its western partners, the communist regime had no time for spies and people continued to vanish from society if they dared challenge the status quo in any way, though this was slowly changing.
Control through fear was alive and well in the country but it was big business and organised crime, more than the communist leaders, who were responsible for most of the continued oppression.
The plan was simple. Pace would drop Hammond and Rachel as close as he dared. From there they would travel through a couple of passes to the old mine site, slipping through the porous border without raising attention to themselves. Hill and Pace would then fly down to their own search area; spending a few days on the job to lend legitimacy to their presence in the area.
Pace and Hammond would keep in touch using their encrypted satellite phones. As soon as Hammond and Rachel were finished, he would then zip in and pick them up, returning them all to the airport for a quick Falcon flight home.
Almost two hours after take off, Pace was slowly circling a flat, snow-covered plateau. Using every ounce of experience, he'd managed to hug the contours of the ground and cross the Chinese border without being spotted by any eyes; human or electronic. The mine entrance still lay many miles away but he dared not fly any closer. The terrain was mountainous and barren at this point, with only low scrub to break the monotony. They had moved up to an elevation of fifteen thousand feet, which was low enough for forestation to thrive, but this particular area was too exposed and rocky. Nothing larger than a small bush existed.