by S. E. Smith
Chavez reappeared several minutes later with a large case. A satisfied smile curved Ren Lu’s lips when he saw Chavez pull out the pieces of a sniper rifle. The bait had worked. Sliding back far enough to keep from drawing attention to himself, Ren Lu stood up, turned on his heel, and headed for the door leading down through the building.
His call to Sun Yung-Wing had worked. He knew if he told his employer that he had discovered that Harrington’s contact was meeting up with Detective Woo from the Hong Kong police to exchange information on the missing American, Sun would notify the mercenary. He glanced down at his watch. He had six hours to finish setting the trap. Before the end of the day, he would have the information he had been trying to get for the past year, and he would have Makayla Summerlin. One he would deliver, the other he would keep for himself.
*.*.*
“It’s a trap, man. It has mousetrap written all over it,” Kevin said with a shake of his head when Brian finished telling all of them about the phone call he had received a few minutes ago. “You’d be crazy to follow through and there’s no way in hell I’d let you take Makayla and Helen along with you.”
“I agree,” Tyrell said from where he was sitting toward the back of the group. “The meeting does has ‘trap’ written all over it. Haven’t you seen any of those movies where the bad guy demands a meeting just to knock off the good guy?”
Brian started to say something, but snapped his mouth shut when both women turned to glare at Kevin and Tyrell with a look of warning. A wry grin curved his lips when he saw Kevin sit back and raise his hands in the air and Tyrell snapped his mouth shut and leaned back in the chair with his arms crossed. Behind Kevin, more than a dozen computer screens mounted to the wall showed different images or bits of information that his friend had uncovered last night.
“Go over the information,” Brian ordered, nodding to the first screen. “In order, so we can follow along with your thought process.”
Kevin released a snort and swiveled in his chair. “Good luck with that! Okay, screen number one,” Kevin said, touching a button on the keyboard so that only the first screen appeared. “I’d like to introduce Captain Cheng Li Zhang, of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. The man has more lives than a cat. I found the same info you did about him dying in the helicopter crash, but I also located six other aliases for him and six other tragic accidents.”
Brian watched the screens light up one at a time with images of the same man, along with different names, occupations, and causes of death. It was the last one that held his attention. He recognized the man from the brief glimpse he had caught of him outside the café. It was obvious from Makayla’s swiftly inhaled breath, that she recognized him, as well.
“Resurrected, he is now called Ren Lu. A week ago, he became Sun Yung-Wing’s head of security,” Kevin added, touching another button on the keyboard and bringing up the image of Sun Yung-Wing. “I ran a background check on this guy, and let me tell you, he’s a piece of work. If you ever have a chance to do business with the guy, run like hell. If you don’t believe me, ask his former head of security. Oh, right, you can’t.”
“What happened to his former head of security?” Makayla asked, a shiver going through her at the cold, dark eyes staring outward.
“I found a reference to a location offshore in about six hundred feet of water,” Kevin muttered. “I think you could safely say the guy is fish food by now.”
“Gross! Remind me to never eat seafood again,” Makayla replied with a repulsed expression.
“What else did you find out?” Brian asked, leaning forward.
“Sun Yung-Wing is involved in some serious shit. I haven’t been able to access everything, but I suspect that he isn’t shipping the stuffed bunnies that are listed on the invoices. The shipment weights, numbers, and destinations are all wrong. I’ll work on a program to see if I can’t run some analysis to figure out what type of cargo is, but I’m guessing either human cargo or something more valuable,” Kevin replied, pressing another button. “Getting back to Ren Lu, someone doesn’t want him found. The information I showed you is all there is. If they have anything else, it isn’t in digital form.” Kevin moved the latest image of Ren Lu to another screen and the next series of images came up. “Your man, Harrington, was smart. He knew that the information he had was worth a fortune and would likely get him the weighted ankle bracelets next to the head of security if he was caught. The flash drive he was carrying was encrypted. I have had a few minor issues accessing it, but ultimately no one’s a match for this brain,” Kevin continued, tapping his finger against his head.
“Such modesty,” Helen murmured with a raised eyebrow.
Kevin shook his head. “I’ve got the degrees, or lack of them to prove it,” he quipped with a wink. “No, seriously, my brain eats encrypted code for breakfast. I love the challenge. Anyway, once I cracked it, it didn’t make much sense at first. Take a look.”
Brian sat back and stared at what looked like a bunch of lines. There was a picture of a single sheet of paper. On the paper was a series of numbers and lines, some straight, some curved. It almost looked like a child had scribbled on it.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Brian asked in frustration, shaking his head.
Kevin chuckled. “I had that same WTF moment when I first saw it” he admitted. “What guy would be willing to die for a picture of a bunch of scribbles? I told you that I love challenges, right? Well, I did some research on Harrington and discovered the guy loved to create puzzles.”
“How did you find that out?” Helen asked in amazement.
“Old college yearbooks,” Kevin replied, pressing a button on the mouse and pulling up a screen. “He was voted the most creative mind in puzzle design by his classmates. There were several comments about his ability to take an image and break it down to its most simple form, tear it apart, mix it up, and put it back together. It is kind of like those slide puzzles where they take a picture and mix up the tiles and you have to keep sliding them around until you get all the pieces in the right place to tell what it is.”
Brian glanced at Kevin, who was grinning. “You were able to get the tiles in the right place,” he guessed.
“Yep, all it took was understanding Harrington’s capabilities for doing what he does best – breaking the image down, tearing it apart, putting each line on a tile, then moving it around until the picture appears. I wrote a program that ran about a hundred thousand different versions of it, which was productive because there was not one, but three individual puzzles hidden within the single image. Each puzzle is a clue to where I suspect Harrington hid the information that you are looking for,” Kevin explained, pointing to the puzzles on the screens that were moving through the different positions.
“So, where did Harrington hide the information?” Helen asked with a frown, blinking in surprise when the screens went blank one by one until only three images remained. “That looks like a building.”
“It is. This is the Engineer’s Office of the Former Pumping Station, also known as The Red Brick House, on Shanghai Street in Yau Ma Tei, to be exact,” Kevin replied. He clicked the mouse under his hand to bring up a transparent line drawing of the old building. “It was built in 1895 and is the oldest pumping station in Hong Kong. This is the only section of the original building still standing. It has been used for many things, including a Post Office and a homeless shelter, but is currently empty while the city decides what to do with it.”
“Why would Harrington go there?” Makayla asked in confusion.
“I wondered the same thing until I cross referenced the building, along with some of the other clues in Harrington’s puzzle. Do you see these combinations of letters and numbers at the bottom of the tiles? Unless you solve the puzzle correctly, they don’t mean a thing, but if you put them in order, they make more sense,” Kevin explained with a grin. “The guy loves puzzles. What better way to create one than to do it through Geocaching.”
“Geocaching,�
�� Tyrell repeated, glancing at the numbers. “Isn’t that where people do a scavenger hunt using GPS locations and landmarks to hide things?”
“Yep, you have to go to them if you want to get the clues to the next location,” Kevin said, his voice softening as he stared up at the three screens. “He created a puzzle within a puzzle. Each one will lead you to the next clue until you find where he hid the cache. The flash drive you gave me contained the information on where to start. If you find the first cache, it will lead you to the next.”
“Will we have enough time to find each one before we are supposed to meet Ren Lu in Victoria Park?” Makayla asked, biting her lip in worry.
Brian shook his head. “No,” he replied in a quiet, thoughtful tone before he glanced at Kevin. “How long do you think it would take someone else to do what you did with the flash drive?”
Kevin shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck. He swiveled around in his chair to look at the others with an intense expression. Brian could almost see the wheels turning in Kevin’s brain while his friend processed what he had done.
“Honestly? If they are even half as good as I am, forty-eight hours, at least. If they aren’t as talented – longer,” Kevin replied.
“And if they were just as good as you or better?” Helen asked in a quiet tone.
Kevin’s brow furrowed and he pressed his lips together. Brian could tell Kevin was biting back a sharp retort. He had to hand it to his friend; Kevin did a good job of controlling himself.
“If they are as good or better, which is highly unlikely, by the way, then I would say twenty-four hours or less,” Kevin reluctantly muttered.
“What are we going to do?” Makayla asked, turning to look at Brian with pleading eyes. “If he’ll tell us where Henry is, we have to do something.”
“We go to the first location and find the clue to the second one,” Brian said, staring up at the screens before looking at the others. “Then, we’ll meet Ren Lu at the statue in Victoria Park. I’ll give him the flash drive and we’ll get the information about Henry. Helen and I will go after Henry while Tyrell and you locate the second clue. Once we have Henry, we’ll leave him here with Kevin and meet up with the two of you.”
“I’ll fit each of you with a GPS tracking device. That way I’ll have real time access to you. I can hop on several different satellites to keep the feed live. I can also help guide you from here to the next location and tell you what to expect,” Kevin said with a grim expression.
“It is almost ten o’clock, we need to get moving,” Brian said, rising out of his seat.
20
Brian and Tyrell walked along the dock ahead of Makayla and Helen. Makayla fingered the watch that Kevin had given her. Helen wore a matching one while the two guys had slightly larger, more masculine ones. It would appear that was another one of Kevin’s soft spots, buying fake designer watches from the kids who littered the sidewalks peddling their collections to unsuspecting tourists.
Kevin had opened the back and inserted a small tracking device into each one before sealing it and syncing the times. Makayla glanced out over the water. The morning was a beautiful one, much different from the last couple of days. The weather had warmed up a little, moving into the low seventies, so all she needed was a light jacket over the dark purple silk blouse that Kevin had ordered for her. She wore a short, black leather jacket and matching black jeans. She had opted for her own hiking boots, which worked out well since they matched her jeans and jacket.
Makayla had braided her hair to keep it out of her way. She glanced over at the others. Helen was wearing the cream-colored silk blouse with a pair of dark blue jeans and low-cut cream-colored boots. She had a dark red leather jacket that really complemented her pale complexion and jet black, shoulder length black hair.
Kevin hadn’t been as creative with Brian, settling for a pair of faded denim jeans, a black T-shirt, and a matching black jacket. Tyrell was dressed in his usual jeans, button up white dress shirt, and gray pullover sweater. Both men carried a backpack on their shoulders. Makayla bit her lip when she remembered that she’d forgotten to ask Brian about his arm. She should have offered to change the bandage on it this morning.
“Thank goodness we are off that dock,” Helen muttered under her breath. “I keep expecting to fall through it at any time.”
Makayla released a strained chuckle and nodded. “I know, but you have to admit that it probably helps deter wayward tourists from venturing down it,” she reflected, walking over to Tyrell’s car. “Thank you,” she whispered when she saw Brian standing with the door open for her.
“Makayla,” Brian said, reaching out and touching her arm.
“Yes?” she replied, looking up at him.
His hand slid up her arm to tenderly touch her cheek. She turned her face into his palm, feeling the warmth and soaking it up. At that moment, she knew she still loved him – that she had never stopped.
“Whatever happens, you make sure you stay safe. I want you to run like hell if things go south. Run and don’t look back,” Brian ordered in a slightly desperate tone. “I need to know that you are safe.”
Makayla knew her eyes gave away her thoughts. He must have seen the rebellion in them, the fact that she wouldn’t flee, she would fight. He bent and captured her lips in a passionate, desperate kiss. His fingers tangled in her braid, holding her to him. It took several long seconds before he reluctantly released her and stepped back. His face was grim with determination.
“I won’t be stupid, Brian,” she promised. “If I need to run, I’ll run. But, I won’t leave you or any of the others behind.”
Brian’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. “Not like I did,” he muttered in a self-condemnation.
“We both made mistakes. It wasn’t just you,” she whispered before she reached up and pressed her lips against his to silence his protest.
She pulled back and gazed at him for a second before sliding into the back seat. Brian closed the door and slid into the seat in front of her. Their eyes locked in the rearview mirror before she pulled away, distracted by Tyrell’s humming.
“Shut up,” she muttered when he grinned at her.
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” Tyrell teased. “It’s good to see you together again.”
Makayla shot Tyrell a scowl before she leaned over and brushed a kiss against his cheek. As crazy as he drove her at times, he was also the one to remind her to embrace life and not always be so serious. Straightening, she caught Brian staring at her again. His eyes warm with humor and – love. She swallowed when a wave of heat filled her.
“You’ve got it bad,” Tyrell whispered, his eyes glittering with amusement.
“I should have drowned you when I had the chance,” she growled, rolling the window down so that the sounds of traffic and wind could drown out his laughter.
*.*.*
Makayla was glad Brian was the one doing the driving. Not only was her head still trying to get around the fact that the cars drove on the opposite side of the street like the British, but the traffic and number of signs made her head spin. Helen was giving Brian directions whenever they came to a gridlock on where to turn. It also helped having two people know where they were going and the different streets that would get them there.
She had learned over the last couple of days that Hong Kong had wide streets that were very, very busy and narrow streets that were – well, very, very busy. The narrow streets were made even more claustrophobic by the tall high rises that loomed up over them and the congestion of pedestrians as well as the motorized traffic.
A wave of longing swept through her. Henry and she should have been out on the open sea by now, heading east, then south along the shipping lanes. She closed her eyes and lifted her chin to the infrequent patches of sun that slipped between the buildings. With the motion of the car and the wind in her face, she could almost imagine that she was on the Defiance, cutting through the waves with nothing to stop her.
It was a nice dream until the smell
of exhaust and the piercing sound of a motorcycle going by forced her to roll up the window. She gave Helen a wan smile when the other woman glanced at her with a worried frown. Makayla sat back against the seat and stared out the window.
“Do we have any idea of exactly what we are looking for at this place?” Tyrell asked.
“Kevin printed out the images. In the lower corner is a GPS location. Normally, most devices are only accurate to within ten feet. Kevin gave me a military grade unit accurate to within two,” Brian said. “It’s in my backpack.”
“He already programmed in the wave points,” Helen murmured. “Once we find what we are looking for, it should give us the location of the second site. Kevin said the image shows a Buddha, but it could mean anything. The wave points will give us the actual location. Harrington reversed the last puzzle. We need whatever clues he left at the second location to find the third spot – and the information that he stole. In the first puzzle, he gave us an image of the building. There isn’t anything else. Kevin said we should find what we need inside the building, but there isn’t much information to guide us, just the image of the building and a few lines with an arrow on it. He believes we need to locate the arrow inside the building to find the location of the second puzzle.”
“Don’t forget we’ve got to figure this out before the bad guys do,” Tyrell pointed out.
Makayla shook her head. “Even if they do, without the first piece it will be virtually impossible for them to know where to look. They would have a much more difficult time solving the puzzle.”
“Yes,” Helen agreed. “Yet, not completely impossible.”
“Which is why we are going to find the first one and solve where the second one is before we meet with Ren Lu this afternoon,” Brian said, glancing up in the mirror.
“We should rent another car,” Helen suggested. “We will need two vehicles.”