“Security is bringing over some handheld transceivers, sir,” the dark-haired technician said. “They’re a bit swamped now.”
“Could you check on the status?” Tom asked. “If we identify the bad guys and can’t communicate with the gate guards to warn them, there could be serious trouble.”
“Yes, sir,” the technician said. He took out his cell phone and made a call.
Max turned to Tom and said, “If June or someone else spots Zhao, you and I should bag him.”
“Which of us will drive?” Tom asked.
Max pulled the car keys out of his pocket and jingled them. “You choose.”
“You’ve never offered to let me drive before.”
“This isn’t my SUV.”
Tom chuckled. “Okay, I’ll drive.”
Max tossed him the keys.
On a table in front of them, a monitor streamed live video surveillance of the main gate: vehicles lined up bumper to bumper as sailors and Marines waited for the guards to check them.
“June, we know the basic details of Operation Autumn Wind,” Max said, “but what do you think the other four words stand for: Horizontal, Pearl, Five, and Country?
She shook her head. “They seem to be phases of the operation, but it’s difficult to ascertain more than that at this point. Those documents are still being decrypted.”
On the monitor, an Asian man stopped his vehicle at the security booth and showed his ID. “Is this guy Chinese or a Jap?” Max asked. “I can’t tell the difference.”
Tom frowned.
“What?” Max asked. “Can you tell the difference?”
“No,” Tom said, “but maybe you could ask it in a nicer way.”
“How would you like me to ask it?”
June broke up the bickering brothers. “He looks more Japanese than Chinese.”
“How can you tell the difference?” Max asked.
“I don’t know,” June said. “Maybe because this guy has a longer, more oval face with larger eyes. But that’s not always true. It’s hard to say.”
“I’ll say it’s hard to say,” Max said.
The guard finished checking the man’s ID, and a dog sniffed his vehicle.
“How in the hell does a dog sniff for anthrax?” Max asked.
“Very carefully,” Tom teased.
Max lowered his eyebrows. “Seriously.”
“No idea,” Tom said. “I don’t know what it’s sniffing for.”
“This mission might take a while,” Max said.
Tom shook his head. “It better not take too long. I’ve got to get back to school.”
“And Charlotte,” Max said.
“Yeah.”
“You really like her, don’t you?” Max asked.
“I do.”
“Does she know the things you’ve done?”
“I don’t tell her war stories,” Tom said.
“You can’t run away from who you are.”
“Who am I?”
“You’re an operator. Like Dad and me.”
“Not anymore,” Tom said. “I’m just helping Dad out on this one. This is temporary.”
“What about Maman? Don’t we owe it to her to stay in the fight against these douche bags? Do you want to see more indiscriminate killing of innocents?”
“You owe it to Mom,” Tom said. “I was too little to even remember what she looks like. Besides, whatever we do, it won’t bring her back.”
Max grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him up against the wall. But Tom didn’t fight back, so Max backed off. “Just because you don’t remember her, doesn’t make it right to ignore her. She’s your maman, too.” Max turned away from his brother. How can he be so callous? Why doesn’t he understand how important this is?
On the live monitor more cars passed through security at the main gate. Another Asian man, this one wearing a Navy officer’s uniform and driving a black Hyundai midsized car, stopped at the gate and showed his ID.
“That man looks familiar,” June said.
Max sat up in his seat and studied the monitor. “Where are those damn walkie-talkies?”
“Is that Zhao?” Tom asked.
“No, but he’s MSS,” June said. “He’s a spy.”
“Sonofabitch,” Max exclaimed.
June told one of the Navy techs, “Call the front gate, now.”
Max rose from his chair. “Bag and drag him.”
Tom was on his feet, too, and the two hurried for the door.
Outside, they raced through the parking lot. Tom pressed the remote and the door locks popped up inside their silver Toyota sedan. But the driver’s side and the passenger side were reversed from the layout of American cars, and Max and Tom crossed each other’s path, bumping into each other as they hurried to their doors. Tom took the wheel, and Max hopped into the front passenger seat. Tom fired up the engine and burned rubber. Following the same rules as on Japanese streets off base, everyone on base drove on the left side of the road, too. They passed the USS Blue Ridge on their left before hanging a quick right. Then they picked up speed on the straightaway.
“What if this guy is a decoy?” Tom asked.
“Then we’re screwed.”
A siren sounded from the direction of the gate. Tom slowed, preventing them from overshooting the turn. He turned. Then he accelerated. The siren increased in volume. When they rounded a curve, the spy in the black Hyundai whizzed past them in the opposite direction as a shore patrol vehicle, lights flashing and siren blaring, followed in hot pursuit.
“That’s him!” Max exclaimed.
“Got him,” Tom said. He whipped a U-turn and chased the shore patrol and the spy. They raced to the piers where the Blue Ridge was moored in Tokyo Bay. The spy and shore patrol sped into a turn and passed the USS George Washington, more than a hundred thousand tons of nuclear-powered supercarrier, a small city floating on water. The spy and the shore patrol picked up speed, and Tom kept on their tails. Meanwhile, cars pulled over to allow the shore patrol vehicle to pass.
They turned again, and the spy and shore patrol’s rear wheels drifted. More cars pulled over. The two vehicles turned again. Tom dropped speed as he turned along with them.
Max couldn’t contain his impatience. “Why are you so slow?”
“Too many cars on the road—too many obstacles,” Tom said. “It’s not the fastest car that wins; it’s the first mistake that loses.”
After turning the corner, the spy and the shore patrol pulled ahead, and Tom stomped on the gas to close the gap.
They streaked past the base high school where a variety of fashions were worn by different groups of students—fashionistas, jocks, gangstas, nerds, and the untouchables that didn’t rank on the social chain. Kids are in danger. “Shit!” The spy ran down the middle of the street between lanes and sideswiped a car that was slow to pull over for the shore patrol’s light and siren. Teenagers on the sidewalks scattered away onto the grass, away from the chase.
After another turn, the spy, shore patrol, and Max and Tom weaved around vehicles slowing and stopping in their path. They passed the hospital, and the spy skidded into another turn. On the next turn, Tom slowed. Whack. The spy completed the turn, but an oncoming car hit the shore patrol head-on, stopping it cold.
Tom maneuvered around the wreck and laid on his horn as he picked up speed behind the Chinese spy in the black Hyundai.
The spy accelerated.
“He’s heading out the gate,” Max said.
“I’m on him.”
Although base security focused on the jammed-up line of vehicles trying to enter the base, they were ill prepared to stop anyone who was leaving. The Hyundai blasted through the exit lane of the gate, and Tom closed in directly behind.
The spy took a hard right, and Tom squeezed a yellow traffic light as he followed their target onto the streets of Yokosuka. Although there were multiple lanes in both directions, cars filled them. The vehicles in the far left lane were moving faster, and Tom switched i
nto it, but a bus in the same lane suddenly slowed down, so he swerved back into the lane to his right, clipping the bumper of another car.
Most of the street and building signs were written in Japanese, which Max couldn’t decipher. Soon there appeared to the right a shopping mall, its sign a partial red sun symbol above with the word “Daiei” on it. At the ground level was a Mos Burger shop. Based on the direction they were going and where Tokyo Bay was in relation to the base, he estimated that the sea was close behind the shopping mall—as a frogman, the water was his home. On a blue sign above the street was written the words “Yokosuka Sta.” in English, which looked like a translation for the Japanese gibberish below—probably the main train station for Yokosuka was nearby.
The spy ran a red light and turned left under a pair of crossed pedestrian bridges, and Max and Tom were right behind him. The multiple street lanes shrank into single lanes leading in both directions. The spy passed cars more aggressively, but he couldn’t shake Tom. Japanese high school girls wearing school uniforms strolled in pairs and groups on the sidewalks while office workers trudged alone. Others rode bicycles. A train passed overhead.
Tom hung another left, running the stoplight, but this time the spy turned too wide and slammed into a delivery truck parked against the curb. Tom skidded to a stop and bumped into the spy’s vehicle, blocking its retreat.
“Gotcha!” Tom exclaimed.
The Hyundai’s airbag had deployed on impact, and the spy struggled with it as he restarted the car and shifted into reverse. The Hyundai pressed against Max and Tom’s vehicle. Tom stepped on the accelerator and pressed back.
“You’re going nowhere, dumbass,” Max said.
“I’ll keep him trapped while you wrap him up,” Tom said.
Max exited the car.
The spy hopped out of his vehicle, too, leaving his engine on, and he ran. Two cars honked at the spy, narrowly missing him, and he leaped onto the sidewalk where he pushed his way past pedestrians. Max sprinted after him.
In front of a small store, the spy shoved a woman on a moped and she fell into the woman next to her, knocking them both, their bags of groceries, and their mopeds to the ground. The spy picked up the nearest moped and sped off. The owner yelled and shook her fist in the spy’s direction.
As the other woman rose to her feet, Max picked up her moped. “Sorry,” he said. He mounted the moped, and someone jumped on the back. “Who the hell?!” Max exclaimed.
“It’s me,” Tom said.
The moped was small, but now it seemed smaller. “What happened to the car?” Max asked.
“Engine died,” Tom answered.
Max gunned the throttle, launching them into the street. He didn’t have time to glance back at the owner and feel sorry for her. If an anthrax attack succeeded, it would cause a lot more grief than a stolen moped.
“My butt is hanging off the back here,” Tom complained.
Max scooted forward to squeeze more room for Tom.
Vehicles clogged up the street ahead, leading to a blocked-off lane. The spy avoided a construction site and drove his moped on the sidewalk, nearly hitting a young man wearing a suit. Max shouted for the man to get out of the way. The man froze, and Max clipped his jacket. Although Max had avoided him, now his handlebars were aimed toward a wall. He steered again, only to put him on a collision course with a pear-shaped man on a bicycle. Max swerved around him.
When the sidewalk surrendered to the asphalt of an intersection, the spy returned to the street. Cars slowed for a stoplight, and the spy weaved around them. The lane with a green light had space, and the spy entered it, followed by Max and Tom. A turning car headed straight for them.
“Hold on!” Max shouted.
“Oh, no!” Tom exclaimed, bear-hugging Max.
The spy and Max dodged the oncoming vehicle. Now they drove in the correct lane, but the light at the next intersection turned red. The mopeds ran it. Another car swung around them. A string of cars stopped at a red light facing them, and the spy veered into an open lane.
Confusingly, the street split into three roads, and the spy took the middle one, so Max followed. They rounded a hairpin turn, and Max leaned into it, but he was afraid the added weight of Tom might topple them. His fears were confirmed when the road straightened out, and he tried to sit upright again—they were too heavy for Max to pull out of the lean. But Tom adjusted his weight, and they returned the moped to the upright position.
The ma-and-pa shops along the road were replaced by a residential neighborhood, which had more space. “Can’t you go any faster?” Tom asked above the noise of the moped.
“I’m going full throttle,” Max called back.
They turned left and entered another business district, where signs were written in English. Max and Tom went by a bank and an ice cream shop before passing under a train track. The density of the city increased with taller buildings, more banks, a McDonald’s, and a bustling bus station. Although a massive overhead pedestrian bridge saved pedestrians from Max and Tom, there was nothing to save Max and Tom from the increased volume of cars. Police sirens wailed behind them. Max checked the side-view mirror, but there were no police cars or lights in sight—yet.
The spy turned onto a side street that seemed hardly wide enough for one car to enter, but it had ample space for the mopeds. At the next turn, they arrived in an alley—a dead end. The spy stopped in front of a wall, ditched his moped, and shinnied up a metal pipe.
Max stopped, and the brothers ditched the moped.
“Wish we could shoot him,” Max said.
“I’m tempted,” Tom said.
Max and Tom followed him up the pipe until they reached the roof of a two-story building. The climb tightened the muscles in Max’s arm. The brothers chased the spy across the roof until he leaped to an adjoining rooftop, which was a few feet higher. Max hadn’t thought of the Chinese as being fast runners, but now he was beginning to think they were. After traversing the roof, at the corner, the spy jumped to the corner of the next roof. Although the next roof was only a foot higher than the one Max was on, there were a few feet separating the buildings.
Falling two stories wouldn’t kill Max, but he didn’t welcome the pain, and he definitely didn’t want to lose this guy. Fear was a bastard sword. One edge of the blade was debilitative fear, causing the swordsman to panic when he should be cool, flee when he should stand his ground, or freeze when he should act. The other edge was facilitative fear, encouraging him to calculate his attack with ruthless efficiency, forging his resolve, and increasing the blood flow to his muscles. Max picked up his running pace and jumped.
Made it! He hoped Tom made it, too, but Max was too focused on chasing the spy and not falling off the building to look back. A horizontal pipe blocked Max’s path, and he hopped over it. The spy leaped to another rooftop—this time there was even more space between the buildings, but the spy made the jump, so Max figured he could, too—at least, he hoped he could.
As he leaped, a young couple on the ground looked up in his direction, and the man exclaimed something in Japanese. Max landed safely on the next rooftop, and he hoped Tom gave the couple below an equally impressive showing. Max glanced over his shoulder. Tom was still with him.
At the opposite edge of the roof, the spy leaned over to the adjacent apartment building, grabbed a balcony wall, and climbed over. Although the space between buildings wasn’t significant, a two-story fall seemed significant to Max.
He cleared it.
The spy climbed an emergency fire escape ladder before he disappeared up through a hatch onto a balcony on the third floor. Having lost direct visual on the spy, and not knowing what surprise might be waiting for him, Max drew his pistol.
Crack! The violent sound made Max duck out of reflex, but he was unscathed. There was a tinkling sound above like broken glass hitting the deck, and a woman screamed.
Max climbed up through the hole and aimed. Glass lay sprinkled on the concrete floor of the balcony,
and there were pieces of a broken clay pot and scattered fertilizer near the base of a dwarf palm tree lying on its side. A few feet away, another dwarf palm stood upright in its pot, unmolested. The glass of a sliding door leading inside the building was broken, but from Max’s angle, he couldn’t see much of the apartment’s interior. He cautiously took half a step, aimed his weapon at the apartment, and studied it without entering. Glass crunched under his feet.
A young woman shouted, but Max didn’t understand Japanese and couldn’t see her. This sounded like a hostage situation. He glanced back to see if Tom was good to go. Tom was directly behind him with his weapon at the ready. Tom nodded, and Max swiftly stepped through the opening of the broken glass sliding door. He didn’t want to shoot a hostage by mistake, so he kept his finger off the trigger for now.
In a sparsely furnished bedroom, lying on a bright pink futon, a leggy naked woman clutched a pink pillow in front of her and screamed at Max. In addition to the ceiling lamp in the room, a movie light mounted on a tripod illuminated her. Aimed at her was a video camera wired to a laptop computer. Down the screen scrolled lines of words in different languages, like some kind of international chat room.
What the hell? Max thought.
She chattered angrily at Max. Her Japanese accent was so thick that it took a moment to realize that maybe she was speaking English.
“Sorry,” Max said. There was only one door in the room, so Max exited through it.
“Solly?!” the woman cried out.
Max had worried that he might lose Tom on one of the rooftop jumps, but now he worried if he had the willpower to leave the naked woman.
Max took a second glance back at her before he passed through the living room. He heard a door creak. As he moved into the hall, scanning for threats, he spotted what appeared to be the front door just as it swung shut. He rushed to it, threw it open, and burst outside. Then he caught a glimpse of the spy, heading for the stairs. Max darted after him. The sound of Tom’s footsteps came from behind.
Skipping steps on his way down, Max gained on him. With one hand still gripping his pistol, Max used his free hand to grab the back of the spy’s shirt. That slowed him down, but the spy still had enough downward momentum to pull Max along. Max crashed into him and they both fell, Max landing on top. They slid several steps before they came to a halt. Before Max could secure him, he wiggled loose and stood, but Tom body-slammed him like a supernova and knocked the spy down the next flight of steps. The spy’s body went limp. Max hurried down the steps. He produced a pair of flex-cuffs from his pocket and bound the man’s wrists, while Tom used his cuffs to bind his ankles.
Autumn Assassins: [#3] A Special Operations Group Thriller Page 12