by Roger Weston
A couple of minutes later he ran onto the rocks.
The impact threw him forward, and he landed on his chest. The pain was still there when he heard Chow.
“What you do my boat?” she said. “You crash. You hit rocks.”
Chuck crawled to her. “Are you alright?”
“Sure I good. My boat very bad. I tell you steer the boat. You crash it.”
“Sorry.” He helped her out into waist deep water. Guiding her along, he slogged up onto the beach.
Chuck saw Jeff lagging behind them. “You okay?”
“Minor cardiac arrest. Otherwise, great.”
Chow waved a handkerchief in the air. “Blow your wind into this,” she said.
With Chow on his arm, Chuck hiked down the beach.
Chow’s bullet wound was little more than a flesh wound. Nevertheless, her arm had bled a lot, and her sleeve was soaked in red. They hiked along the shore for forty minutes, and Chow never complained. She slowed them down, however, and Chuck offered to carry her.
“You think Chow old lady?” she said. “Ha! Chow get shot keep walking. You crash my sampan. Where I get new sampan?”
“I thought you were going to sell fish in the market.”
“Don’t you tell me about sell fish. Chow boat lady. Need boat for Hong Kong. Where I get boat?”
“I’ll buy you one.”
She knew when to talk and when to shut up, and she quieted down.
The coast was buried in fog all the way, and Chuck saw little of the nearby mountains. Twice he heard motorboats pass just offshore, but he could not see them.
When Chuck saw a dark shape on the beach he stopped walking.
CHAPTER 49
It took a few moments for Chuck to be sure that he was looking at a helicopter. At first he thought it was a large rock, but as he walked slowly closer, its features took shape.
Chuck put his finger to his lips and motioned for Jeff and Chow to back into the fog. After only a few steps, they could no longer see the chopper.
“What’s wrong?” Jeff whispered. “That’s our bird.”
“You stay here with Chow,” Chuck said.
Chuck approached the chopper slowly. When he saw the faintest outline of it, he backed into the fog fifteen feet and then circled it, using the moonlight to check the sand for footprints. After going all the way around, he decided there was probably no ambush. He moved in closer and verified that the pilot was alone.
“Nice weather,” Chuck said sarcastically, using the cryptogram that he’d discussed with the pilot.
The pilot pushed the door open. “Beautiful. Where you been?”
Chuck drew his pistol and aimed it at the pilot’s chest. “Your friends slowed us down.”
“What?”
“Step down out of there real slow. You have one chance to live, so don’t blow it. Where are the others?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Who’s your employer?”
Keeping his eyes on his captive, Chuck searched the cabin, finding a pistol. “Jeff,” he said. “Come on.”
His old pal emerged from the fog with Chow.
“Our pilot planned to kill us. Can you fly this thing?”
“You got it wrong,” the pilot said.
Jeff grinned. “I could take this apart and put it back together before you finished torturing him.”
“Shit,” the pilot said.
Chuck delivered a punch to his sternum. The man buckled to his knees, but Chuck hauled him back up and shoved him into the back of the chopper.
“Keep it low,” Chuck said. “The airport’s nearby.”
“Where are we going?” Jeff said.
“Just head down the coast for now.”
Jeff flew ten feet above the beach. They’d only been up for a couple of minutes when Chuck spotted a Chinese fishing boat anchored offshore with its shore boat beached at a trail head.
“Take her down there.”
They landed and climbed out onto the beach.
Chuck watched the boat and saw that nobody came out on the deck. “Take off your clothes,” he said to the pilot.
“Go to hell.”
“Do it or die.”
The man hesitated, then stripped down to his underwear.
“Toss me your clothes.”
The man obeyed. Then Chuck handcuffed him to the helicopter.
Chuck held up the pistol he’d found under the seat. “What was this for?”
The pilot grunted. “Protection.”
Chuck slammed the pistol across the side of the pilot’s face. The man’s head snapped sideways. He grunted and then spat out blood. The profanity that came out of his mouth spouted like refuse from a ruptured pipe.
Chuck brought his boot up to the side of his head. The man’s flesh and scalp opened up. The pilot lay in the sand, unconscious.
“Get Chow into that shore boat. We’re taking the fishing boat.”
“Where to?”
“We’ll stick to the original extraction plan, but we’ll take it slow.”
Jeff glanced out to the junk. “We’re sailing that thing to Taiwan?”
“Let’s get moving.”
“What about the poker chip?” he said.
“I got it.”
“What does it say?”
Chuck handed it to him, a common clay chip.
Jeff looked it over. “This is it?”
“We’ve got to get moving.”
“It doesn’t even tell you where Jin Mountain is. This was all for nothing.”
“No, it wasn’t for nothing. It was for Lydia.”
CHAPTER 50
Pusan, Korea
Robert entered Pusan Hotel by the side door. The shag carpet was a grotesque red shade that looked as if it should’ve been replaced twenty years ago. He passed through the lobby, slowing by the wall mirrors. Robert got on the elevator and pushed the button for the ninth floor. He thought of Chuck Brandt. The fact that he had gone to China in search of an antique poker chip testified to his confused and desperate state of mind. You couldn’t get much more desperate than that. A classic specimen of the lower class. A man of compassion. A fool who spared the life of a man who came to kill him. Ethics. Cheap wine for the simple mind. By now his bad blood was flowing into a warm current in the South China Sea. That was a shame because the man used to be a legendary assassin. If only he hadn’t started questioning the wisdom of his own actions, he still would be.
The bell dinged, and Robert poked his head out of the elevator on the ninth floor. He looked both ways down the hall before stepping out into it. He found 902 and knocked. He was positively irritated at how long it took Parcher to answer.
He entered the room and frowned at the squalor. The mirror on the roof no doubt impressed the Russian sailors, but not Robert. He gave Parcher a cold glare and held it for a moment, judging his appearance. The big man was actually wearing a sweaty t-shirt that showed his thick arms and his big chest. And he’d known Robert was coming.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said. “You look like someone just kicked you in the balls.”
“We’ve had some issues in Tai O.” Parcher could barely sustain eye contact when he said it. Shame was gripping his face and twisting his expression into unnatural contortions. “Brandt got away.”
Robert smiled. Warmly he said, “What do you mean?”
“We’ve got a helicopter searching the coast. We’ll find the bastard within hours and say bye-bye. I guarantee it.”
Again Robert smiled. It was so predictable when you were forced to entrust important matters to servants of the lower classes that in their dullness they would blunder.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Like I said, we’ve got a bird in the air and men on the ground.”
Robert’s hand leapt out and seized Parcher’s throat. His right hand delivered a hard and fast blow to his diaphragm, knocking Parcher’s wind out. The former pro fighter gasped and dropped to
his knees. For a minute, he wheezed and drooled on the floor while trying to get a lung full of air. When he was breathing normally again, Robert grabbed him by his hair, yanked his head back and put his pistol to the man’s temple.
“I don’t have the time or the patience for this.” Robert felt a wave of rage snap through his flesh like electricity, and he felt almost incapable of refraining himself from pulling the trigger.
Parcher’s body started to shake uncontrollably.
“Fix this,” Robert said, “or I’ll bury you in an unmarked grave. And every year I will visit your grave to piss on it. Find Chuck Brandt and cancel his contract. Give him a clean severance package. If you create more problems, I’ll bring in a new assistant to deal with him, and we’ve already discussed the details of your transfer.”
Robert let go of his hair, walked out of the room and shut the door. As he walked down the hall, he thought he heard the sounds of a man puking. That was good. Parcher got the message.
Robert wondered what Brandt was thinking, where he was, what he was doing. He may have underestimated Brandt. The tormented man still had it.
What the hell was he doing? In his fury, Robert wasn’t thinking so clear himself. He turned and went back to the door and knocked. It took a minute for Parcher to open the door. The smell that drifted out verified Robert’s suspicions.
Inside, Robert gestured to the table.
Parcher sat.
“How long ago did you lose him?”
“I just got off the phone before you showed up. Maybe half an hour ago.” Parcher explained about the boat chase and about half his team getting killed. Brandt had shown up at the extraction point, but somehow he’d foiled the assassin.
Robert glared at him. “You let me walk out of here without telling me that?”
“You didn’t give me a chance.”
Robert was silent for a minute. “I want him dead before I eat breakfast in the morning.”
“You may not have to wait that long.”
“Go on.”
“He smashed his sampan on the rocks. That means he’s on foot. We figure with no extraction plan, he’s headed for the airport or the ferry.”
“Unless he calls in another chopper.” Robert walked over to the window and looked out. Pusan Harbor stretched along the waterfront. Massive cranes hung over ships. Endless stacks of cargo containers filled up sprawling acres.
Robert hissed. “He’s turning out to be a real problem. The game is over, but Brandt doesn’t know it and won’t quit.”
“We’ll get him. Don’t worry.”
Robert left the hotel by a side door and walked down to the waterfront. Signs in Korean Hangul hung overhead and an aquarium boiled with live eels in front of a restaurant. Robert stopped to watch the eels fight for their lives. A motorcycle with a filthy milk crate strapped over its rear wheel jumped the curb and parked next to him on the sidewalk. At least half a dozen live puppies had been stuffed into the small crate. They were packed so tightly that they couldn’t even move. One of them looked at Robert hopelessly, with pleading eyes.
Robert stared at the dog and thought about Brandt. Maybe Leslie was right. Maybe her psych ops chaos theory only worked on soft targets. He smiled. Fortunately, the termination option worked on all of them.
He recalled the Colombia massacre that started all of this. It had occurred on a remote family compound in Bogotá, Colombia, a few days after Chuck Brandt walked out on Curtis, leading to an aborted mission. Shortly after, an unknown assassin had wiped out Robert’s business partners—the one’s whose interests Brandt and Curtis were supposed to be furthering by taking out a rival South American kingpin. Five of their armed cartel guards had been taken out in the middle of the night. A lone operator had entered their compound and cut the throats of the men before a scream awoke the sleeping. What followed was a shootout in which eight more people died. The entire leadership of the cartel had been wiped out by the lone man.
The cartels now referred to the man as the ghost.
This had been a stiff blow to Robert’s fortunes, costing him a ten percent cut of the huge business. The kingpin who Brandt and Curtis were supposed to have killed moved in and took over the market, supplying hundreds of millions of dollars of additional dope to America.
It had been verified that Curtis immediately left the country. But Brandt was seen in Bogotá a week later. After that, both assassins went to ground to avoid sanction for failing their mission. Not long after the debacle, RUMAN had located Chuck and postponed eliminating him. Instead they offered him a new job. He’d declined, saying he could no longer kill. That’s why he’d run out on Curtis. But the recent death of his wife had broken him and made him careless in a way that played right into Robert’s hands. So RUMAN made Chuck a proposition, and Brandt agreed to get back on board with RUMAN as a recruiter at the Clearbrook Apartments in Birmingham, Alabama. Robert then hired Leslie to convince Chuck to deal with his emotional issues through psychiatric help. And so the game began.
Robert thought about things like this as he walked along the waterfront of Pusan, South Korea. He wondered if Brandt was the man that the cartels called the ghost.
CHAPTER 51
After two days at sea, Chuck sailed the old Chinese fishing boat into a small bay in Taiwan. Within seven hours of setting foot in Taiwan, Chuck and Jeff were on a flight to Spain. Before leaving, Chuck had paid for Chow’s doctor visit, given her travel money and more than enough to buy a new sampan when she got to Hong Kong. She was happy and cried when they left, giving Chuck her daughter’s address and insisting that he send a letter to tell her if he found his woman.
Chuck had hugged her and said good-bye and felt sad that he’d probably never see her again.
In flight, Chuck grit his teeth from the lingering pain of his wounds. He had pain killers but didn’t take any. Instead, he squeezed the little bottle in his hand to help him endure the pain. He enjoyed the suffering. Something about suffering seemed right and good to him. It was as it should be. He deserved it. It also helped him to keep his mind in the present, clear and sharply focused on finding Lydia. Unfortunately, he also needed sleep, and the pain made this harder.
A few times during the flight, Chuck drifted into something approaching sleep if not the real thing. He catnapped every once in a while when the movie was playing or the baby in the back row stopped crying for a while.
He was sipping a cup of orange juice at cruising altitude when Jeff leaned over and said, “What are we going to do when we get to Madrid?”
Chuck answered him. “We’re going to play the game, my friend. All new rules.”
CHAPTER 52
Lantau Island, Hong Kong
Pulling his car to the side of the road, Parcher got out at a spot where he could see a huge bronze Buddha sitting on top of a nearby mountain. It was striking, but he barely glanced at it. He took the call from Robert on his secure Sat Phone.
“You found him yet?” Robert said.
“We will soon.”
“I doubt it,” Robert said. “He’s on a plane to Spain.”
“Shit,” Parcher said. “I can’t believe it.”
“You better believe it—and fix it!”
Parcher pulled the phone away from his ear for just a moment, then brought it back. “I will.”
“You have 48 hours, Parcher. If our problem is not eliminated by then, you will be.”
Parcher returned his attention to the Buddha and began to sweat.
CHAPTER 53
Madrid, Spain
Chuck stood in the shadows of one of Plaza Mayor's portals, an arched entrance to the open square. He sported a black wig and a leather jacket, sunglasses and a cap. As usual, he wore running shoes, though he hoped he wouldn’t need them today.
Plaza Mayor was surrounded by a huge four-sided building. Over the centuries, the large square had been the site of executions, tournaments, weddings, bullfights and inquisition trials. He knew it well from his frequent visits. He had cho
sen this location for the meeting, but now, looking it over, he realized it had been a hasty choice hatched in a jet-lagged brain. He wouldn’t stay for long.
In the center of the plaza he saw the statue of Philip III, straddling his horse. At the base of the big statue stood a man in brown pants and a sports jacket, Chuck waved to him. The man had a weasel’s face and wire-rimmed glasses. He walked to Chuck, and his hand came up.
“Harry Glass,” he said in an English accent. “International Herald Tribune. You must be Bob Lawler.”
Chuck shook his hand.
“What’s this all about?” Harry said.
Chuck’s gaze swept across the square, stopping at nothing, but even standing under the portal made him feel boxed in. “Let’s take a walk,” he said. They headed down Calle Mayor toward Puerta del Sol.
“Like I said, I have to keep my identity anonymous.”
“I understand,” Harry said. “But I’ll have to verify enough details of the story to justify going to press.”
Chuck looked over his shoulder, then said, “There’s a little cafeteria a couple of blocks from here. Let’s head over there. I’ve been driving forever and I’m hungry. Right now I want nothing more than a café con leche and a jamon y queso.”
“It’s on me,” Harry said. “Anxious to hear your story.”
“You won’t be disappointed. I want to expose a rogue American intelligence agency called RUMAN. It’s run by a man named Robert Fielding. A story of corruption and abuse of power at the highest levels.”
“I’m interested. Go on.” Harry jotted something down on his pad.
“How long will it take before you print the story?”
“Hard to say. A secretive operation like you’re talking about won’t be easy to verify. We don’t need to know everything, but we need to base our story on concrete facts.”
“I can give you those.”
“Then we have to verify them and we need another source.”
“That’ll be tough. My source was killed a couple of days ago. That should tell you something.”