False Horizon

by Alex Archer

  33

  Tuk led Mike back down the corridor. Each man was armed and Tuk felt better about Annja’s chances now that there was definitely help on the way. And hopefully, Garin would find his way into the cave and bring reinforcements.

  But he knew they couldn’t rely on that. Tuk raced along the corridor and then drew up short as they approached the room with the giant Buddha statues. He pointed out the explosives to Mike.

  “Vanya has the entire room wired to go up at any time. It’s what she used to get us to come out into the open.”

  Mike inspected one of the bundles and shook his head. “This is serious military-grade stuff. How did she ever get her hands on it?”

  “I don’t know, but Vanya is certainly not all that she seemed last night. She’s much more dangerous.”

  “I’d guess so, judging from how these were positioned. She had to have help from the military in order to do this.”

  Tuk pointed. “We’re almost there.”

  Mike nodded. “All right, how do we play this? Straight-up assault or do we hold back and make them think we’re more than we actually are?”

  Tuk frowned. “I don’t know much about military tactics, Mike. Your guess is as good as mine, if not better.”

  Mike checked the status of his gun and nodded. “I say we just shoot them both and be done with it. No sense letting them hang around any longer than necessary. And considering what Vanya is trying to pull here, it’d be better if she was dead.”

  Tuk held up his hand. “Wait, shouldn’t we keep her alive so she can stop the installation from exploding?”

  “I don’t know if she even could,” Mike said. “Short of fishing those bodies out of the treatment facility—which would mean exposing ourselves to immense radiation—there’s nothing we can do. And when the treatment facility goes, everything else is going boom. This is the last place we want to be.”

  “I see.” Tuk frowned. The idea of a nuclear waste treatment plant exploding made his heart ache with the thought of what would happen to the surrounding region.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Mike said. “But it can’t be helped. If we had a team who knew what they were doing and had equipment, then maybe. But we don’t have any of that. And we’d die trying.”

  “I know,” Tuk said. “It just seems like it’s going to result in a terrible environmental catastrophe.”

  “It will,” Mike said. “Absolutely. But we need to find Annja and then get the hell out of here or no one is going to be alive to care about the cleanup. And we have to ensure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again somewhere else.”

  “All right.” Tuk made sure his weapon was ready. “Let’s go and get this done before my heart goes soft.”

  “Just remember what Vanya’s plans will do to your country and use that to fire yourself up,” Mike said.

  Tuk nodded. “I will.”

  Mike stepped forward and then stopped. His voice was a harsh whisper. “Tuk.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t…move…a muscle….”

  “What’s the matter?”

  Mike pointed at the floor. “There’s a trip wire and my foot is resting against it. If I move anything, this whole room will blow up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me. Look at the wire and tell me what’s it’s connected to. And hurry up about it.”

  Tuk carefully followed the line of almost invisible wire across the room to where a large bundle of explosives sat wedged in with a claymore mine. He read the lettering front toward enemy and then retreated back to Mike. He’d seen them before in his intelligence days.

  “Claymore and an explosive package wedged in with it. The claymore is American.”

  Mike frowned. “It is?”

  “Yes.”

  Mike nodded. “All right. I’m going to ease my foot back. But before that, I want you to go into the corridor we just came from. If I do this wrong, one of us has to stay alive and help Annja. Can you do that for me?”

  “Sure. I just can’t figure out where this could have come from. I ran down this corridor only a few minutes ago in order to get to the trapdoor.”

  “It might well have been meant for you,” Mike said. “Vanya’s men could have easily laid this trap in the hope you would hit it on the way out. Did Vanya seem almost willing to let you go earlier?”

  Tuk frowned. “Actually, yes. She didn’t put up nearly the fight I thought she would have.”

  “That was probably part of her plan. With you blown up, the surprise would have enabled her to overpower Annja. Only the way you ran or walked must have carried you right over the trip wire.”

  “So I missed being blown up by luck?”

  Mike smiled. “I could use a little bit of that luck right now, my friend.” He nodded at the corridor. “Now go and let me get this done. One way or another I’ve got to get free of this or else we’ll die.”

  Tuk retreated to the corridor and wedged himself in against the wall. If Mike was unsuccessful, the explosion would no doubt cause some serious damage to the facility, especially given how much explosive was in that room.

  Tuk shook his head. How had he managed to get himself wrapped up in all of this, anyway? All because some stranger named Garin had hired him to look after Annja and make sure she was safe.

  Tuk sighed. He didn’t think he was doing such a wonderful job.

  Mike’s face appeared around the corner. “Okay. I think we’re all set now.”

  Tuk let out a breath. “Thank God. I thought the entire room was going to explode if you didn’t manage it.”

  Mike nodded. “I got myself free and then replaced the pin in the claymore so it wouldn’t go off. I did a quick check of the room to make sure there weren’t any other surprises lying in wait for us. It’s clear.”

  “They probably didn’t have time to set anything else up,” Tuk said. “And then Annja killed them, anyway.”

  Mike smiled. “She did, did she?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “She’s a marvel that one.” Mike gestured with his gun. “Now come on, let’s get out there and see what we can do to help.”

  Tuk led them back to the statue room and then toward the doorway. He could hear voices. And he gestured for Mike to get low.

  Tuk looked out and saw Annja with her sword in her hands. Across from her stood Hsu Xiao and Vanya. Tuk frowned and looked at Mike. “Annja’s injured.”

  Mike nodded. “I can see that. But how badly? Do you think she can still fight?”

  “You’ve known her longer than I have,” Tuk said. “But if I had to place a bet on whether or not she could, I’d definitely say yes.”

  “So would I.”

  “Look at Hsu Xiao’s leg. It seems like Annja managed to get something in on her, too.”

  Mike chuckled quietly. “Good, that means she’ll be easier to take care of.”

  Tuk looked at him. “I don’t know. She scares the hell out of me.”

  “Nothing to it. She’ll die as fast as anyone else once she’s got enough bullets in her.”

  “Well, do you mind shooting her, then? I’d rather not have to deal with her.”

  “Fine.”

  Tuk leaned back and looked at Mike. “Are you ready?”

  “Time’s ticking, my friend. Let’s get this done.”

  Tuk got to his feet and readied the assault rifle. Everything was set to go and he flicked the selector switch to semiautomatic. Perhaps, he thought, if he got the drop on Vanya quickly, he wouldn’t have to shoot her. That would be a good thing. Maybe there was a way to stop the facility from exploding. Maybe Vanya knew what to do.

  “Tuk!”

  Tuk looked at Mike. “Sorry.”

  “Come on, man, let’s get this done. I’ll go after Hsu Xiao and you take down Vanya. Don’t stop for anything until we have them both down and dead, okay?”

  “Mike, what if Vanya knows how to stop the facility from exploding?”

  Mike shook his head.
“Listen to me, Tuk. That treatment installation is not going to tolerate the infusion of scores of bodies. It wasn’t designed for that. Vanya knows that and that’s exactly why she’s done what she’s done. She wants this place to blow up. She’s got no interest in saving it, and if you think she does, you’re wrong.” Mike leaned closer to Tuk. “Now listen to me. I know this isn’t what you signed on for, but we’ve got to do something here or else we’re all going to die. Do you understand?”

  Tuk nodded. “Yes. I understand. Sorry.”

  “I’m not a killer, either, Tuk. This isn’t something that I do every day. But at the same time, I know that these people are responsible for unleashing some truly bad stuff on the world. And I think it’s fairly safe to say that they deserve to be punished for their crimes.”

  “I agree with you, Mike. It’s just that, in all my years of work, I was always beyond that type of work. And I never minded being there.”

  “I’m afraid there’s no one else who can do what needs to happen. Two targets. Two of us. It’s the only way to make sure we’re successful,” Mike said.

  “All right. I’m sorry.”

  “Forget about it. Let’s just get this done.”

  Tuk moved up and took his position. “I’m ready.”

  Mike brought his gun up into his shoulder and sighted. “On three, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “One…”

  Tuk took a series of deep breaths. His heart pounded against the inside of his chest like a hammer going a thousand times a minute.

  “Two…”

  Tuk steeled himself. He let his trigger finger come to rest just outside the trigger guard. He brought the weapon up so he had a clear sight picture. He settled the sights on Vanya. Mike was right, he decided. Better to finish this and then get the hell out of here. No sense dying for no reason. And at least they’d be able to tell the world what happened so it didn’t occur again elsewhere.

  Tuk heard Mike start to say “three” but the word died on his lips as they suddenly heard another voice from somewhere behind them.

  “Stop.”

  It wasn’t a shout. It just a simple command. Softly spoken. But most definitely a stern command.

  Tuk frowned. Something about that voice reminded him of someone.

  “Put your weapons down or we will shoot you where you stand.”

  “Mike?” Tuk whispered.

  “Better do it, Tuk. There’s a gun barrel aimed at the base of my skull right now and I don’t think these guys are fooling around.”

  Tuk lowered his weapon.

  “Very good. Now both of you turn around very slowly. If either of you moves too fast, we will shoot.”

  Tuk gulped and then turned around slowly. Mike was in front of him but he heard the surprise in Mike’s voice. “You.”

  “Move aside so I can see the man behind you, Mike.”

  Mike moved and Tuk was startled. Three men stood there. He recognized the sneering smiles on the faces of Burton and Kurtz.

  And in the middle, his eyes hidden behind a huge pair of sunglasses, stood Mr. Tsing. He held a silenced pistol in his hand and gestured with it. “Step away from the doorway. We wouldn’t want to interrupt the party out there too soon, now, would we?”

  Mike kept his hands up. “What’s this all about Tsing?”

  “It’s about me making sure my investment doesn’t run away from me.”

  “I’m not running.”

  Tsing smiled. “I must say you’ve done a fantastic job, Mike. I almost didn’t expect you to find it. But you have. And I’m ready to take it over for my very own paradise.”

  Mike shook his head. “I don’t think you want to do that. This isn’t Shangri-La at all. It’s a nuclear waste treatment facility disguised by the Chinese as a palatial tropical paradise.”

  Tsing laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I wish I was,” Mike said. “But the woman who created this entire mess is standing right outside. You can ask her if you want.”

  Tsing eyed Mike but then frowned as he cast a glance at the doorway. “Perhaps I shall.”

  34

  “No one move, please.”

  Annja looked up and gasped as she heard the voice and saw Mr. Tsing striding out into the open pavilion. He paused, looked up at the sky and seemed vaguely annoyed that the sun was out. But he merely adjusted his sunglasses and kept walking ahead.

  Behind him came Tuk and—Mike! Annja was so happy she almost forgot to stay still. Then, behind Tuk and Mike came Tsing’s two thugs, Burton and Kurtz. The automatic rifles they held didn’t look the least bit friendly.

  Tsing directed Tuk and Mike to one side with Kurtz covering them. He pointed at Burton. “Stand there and cover everyone else, but particularly that woman there.” This last statement was directed at Hsu Xiao. “If anyone moves, kill her first.”

  Hsu Xiao glared at Tsing. “I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

  “Well, it’s not as though you didn’t try, my dear. After all, that nasty little neurotoxin you put into my glass was something else. A rather spectacular little drug, isn’t it? Unfortunately, I simply wasn’t feeling like a drink, so after you left, I happened to pour it into the large fern in the study. Imagine my surprise when the damned thing toppled and the fronds turned that horrible shade of brown.” He smiled. “Of course, by then you had already departed Katmandu for places unknown—until now. We scoured the city for you, of course. I’m not exactly fond of people who attempt to poison me or want to see me shuffle off this mortal coil.”

  Hsu Xiao said nothing, but Annja could feel the rage boiling off of her. She wanted to strike Tsing down badly.

  Vanya must have sensed it, too, because she spoke quietly in Chinese to Hsu Xiao and it seemed to at least calm her down somewhat.

  Tsing smiled. “I’ll bet you really want to have a go at me right now, don’t you? Make up for all those times I forced myself upon you? All the times you pleaded with me to stop because you didn’t like it and yet I continued because you were mine. All along it must have driven you nearly insane not being able to slice my throat with those ridiculous claws of yours. But you hadn’t yet found out what you needed to know, had you?”

  Hsu Xiao said nothing.

  Tsing leaned back against the wall and looked at Annja. “You see, Hsu Xiao was a plant. She needed to know if I had any inkling of the location of this place. It was imperative that I didn’t, I imagine. Because if I’d caught wind of it, then I could have taken steps to ensure that that woman there,” he said, pointing at Vanya, “couldn’t go ahead with her plans.”

  Annja frowned. “Who exactly are you, Mr. Tsing?”

  He smiled. “Me? Why I’m just your average Chinese businessman. That’s all. Nothing special about me.”

  Vanya laughed. “Tsing is the resident Chinese intelligence officer in charge of Katmandu. It is his responsibility to report on anything that might jeopardize the control China has over Tibet from this side of the border.”

  Tsing shook his head. “Now, really, was it necessary for you to reveal that? I believe she might have readily accepted my other explanation, but no, you had to go and ruin it. Shame.”

  “Annja is too intelligent to fall for that. It doesn’t add up.”

  Tsing smiled at Annja. “Vanya is upset because I report to the very people she would no doubt like to see removed from power—one way or another. And it was my job to make sure our operations in the area were safe and secure.”

  He got up and walked around the courtyard. “Imagine my surprise then when the transponder we placed in the plane we loaned you and Mike started beeping from this very mountain. It was rather amusing, actually. And at first I couldn’t believe it. You see, I’d seen the map, and never imagined that you would find yourselves here rather than the exact position the map shows. But then the universe is a strange thing, isn’t it? And whether through luck or serendipity or what have you, you and Mike, and even that little insignificant speck of
dust called Tuk, found yourselves here.”

  Annja saw fury blaze across Tuk’s face. “So you knew about this place all along?” she said.

  Tsing smiled. “My dear, I helped build this place. It is here because I sought out a special location for us to conceal our activities. My government has been trying for years to come up with a means to dispose of certain elements of our waste. We’ve tried all manner of things and nothing worked.”

  “So you came here.”

  “We came here because one of our scientists had an idea. He said that if we could harness the heat from the waste and channel is just so, we could turn a frozen landscape into a tropical one. The idea was a bit far-fetched but it grew to gain support and the initiative was launched several years back. It was incredibly expensive, but we thought that if we could achieve what the scientist claimed, we might actually turn this place into a tourist spot.”

  Annja’s eyebrows shot up as high as they could go. “You wanted to bring tourists here atop a pile of nuclear waste?”

  Tsing chuckled. “I know it seems crazy, but really, look around. You must admit that we did an amazing job building it. Look at the incredible statues. It’s all very convincing. Even the fruit trees are real.”

  Annja felt sick at the thought that she’d eaten a peach off of one of them a few hours earlier. Had she known about the nuclear waste, she wouldn’t have been so gung-ho about it.

  “The resort itself was obviously designed to help us offset our costs. And we know the lure of Shangri-La is so great that we would draw hundreds of thousands every year. But more importantly, if the technology worked, then we would put it to use in certain other areas of our country where the land is less than optimal for growing food.”

  “This is insane,” Annja said. “You’re talking about burying nuclear waste in the ground. The consequences of that would kill thousands.”

  Tsing held up his hand. “We are talking about burying it, but not in the manner you think. We don’t just lob it into the soil and be done with it. We plant a containment device that not only keeps the waste from leeching into the soil, but generates and channels incredible energy. Not only does it enable the soil to grow warmer and more fertile, but we also thought we could siphon off some of the heat to help keep houses warm. Imagine being free of oil as a heating implement. The savings alone in that field would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars.”