Chasing Rain

by Brandt Legg

  “Why are you quoting the first line from Love, Anger, Madness: A Haitian Triptych by Marie Vieux-Chauvet?” 0830 asked.

  “How did you hear that, and how do you know the reference?” Franco asked, equally surprised and annoyed.

  “I’ve read every book ever written.”

  “Impossible, you’ve only been a CHIP for two days!”

  “RAIN allowed me to read every book ever written instantly,” 0830 said. “And, of course, I also remember every word.”

  “‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,’” Franco said.

  “Now you’re quoting The Bible.”

  “Exactly,” Franco said. “God help us.”

  Chase drove into oncoming traffic and onto the opposite sidewalk to get around a lineup of cars waiting for a light.

  “Apparently the police don’t like your driving,” Flint said.

  “Really? I’d say it’s your shooting that got their attention.”

  “Either way, I think they want you to pull over.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Chase said, narrowly scraping past a Molson beer truck in the intersection.

  “They probably wouldn’t like your phony papers, my weapons—”

  “Your shooting.”

  “Your speeding, crashing, and total disregard for Alberta traffic laws—”

  “I’m not in the mood to be taken into custody and thrown into jail where I’ll just be waiting for one of Franco’s thugs to shank me.”

  “Speaking of the devil,” Flint said, still staring out the back with his shotgun ready. “Franco isn’t letting the police slow his pursuit.”

  Chase checked the rearview mirror. The blue SUV was banging its way through and closing fast.

  “Franco knows he’ll be protected. GlobeTec has enough juice to get him out of anything, anywhere.” Chase clipped a Subaru that was parallel parking so hard it spun into the lane behind him just in time for a police car to slam into it.

  “Planned that,” Chase said triumphantly.

  “Like to see you do it again,” Flint shot back.

  “You might.” Chase holding down the horn, trying to clear pedestrians from his path, picked up speed again.

  “Franco’s still coming hard,” Flint said. “He even rammed another cop car.”

  “I think he’s counting on the CHIPs advanced AI. And he’s right, even an idiot fitted with RAIN could find a way to get out of this.”

  “Maybe he wants you dead so badly he just doesn’t give a damn about the consequences.”

  “That, too.”

  “We’re not going to be able to outrun the cops,” Flint said as two more patrol cars joined the chase from a side street.

  “We’re gonna have to,” Chase said. In the rearview mirror, Chase saw the blue SUV force its way across traffic as horns raged and tires screeched. Trying to close the distance between them, the driver of the blue SUV accelerated too fast, wound up on the sidewalk, and took out half a block of wooden construction fencing. Splinters, shards, and split boards flew through the air.

  “We’ve got to get out of the city!” Flint yelled. “There’s too much congestion downtown. Either the cops are going to box us in, or Franco will get us cornered for easy shots.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Chase said, cutting in front of a city bus taking a diagonal left on 100th Street. Traffic was a bit lighter. The Challenger was flying at about seventy kph when he approached Winston Churchill Square. “Tell me where the closest parking garage is.”

  Another police car came off 102nd Avenue and got in behind them, ahead of Franco.

  Flint studied the map on his phone. “Take the next left! There’s a big parking garage half a block up.”

  Chase squealed around the corner, hoping for a break.

  “What’s the plan?” Flint asked. There were now four police cruisers and Franco behind them.

  Chase shouted out his idea, some of it forming as he spoke.

  Flint leaned forward to look up through the windshield as the chopping sound of a police helicopter echoed down between the tall buildings. “I hope this works,” Flint said, sounding as if he didn’t think it would.

  “Find me the closest bus and subway stops,” Chase said. He swerved in front of a large delivery truck, causing the driver to oversteer into the other lane and right into one of the police cars, the pileup mostly blocking the road.

  “Damn, did you plan that, too? Flint asked, impressed.

  “Told you, I’m a professional race car driver.”

  Chase drove the Challenger into the narrow entrance and plowed through the gate into the parking garage without bothering to stop for a pay-ticket. As he passed the five kph speed limit sign, he was already doing twenty.

  The two stealth drones circled high above the structure, unable to see their target for the first time since being engaged.

  “Take my Beretta,” Flint said. “You might need it.”

  “If I need a gun, I’ll already be dead,” Chase said, jerking the car violently to avoid a woman opening the hatchback of her ForeRunner.

  Fishtailing around tight, squealing turns, the Challenger continued to pick up speed. Once they hit the fourth level, Chase had pushed the Challenger’s speedometer over sixty kph, scraping the concrete wall, sparks spraying and the scraping of metal echoing in the closed space. Finally, he slammed the brake pedal. Even before the car slid fully to a stop, Chase jumped out. At the same instant, Flint slid over to the driver seat, pulled the door shut and yelled, “Good luck!” He stomped on the gas pedal.

  “You too,” Chase shouted back without turning around, running so fast he almost missed the entrance to the sky bridge.

  Flint, ignoring his vibrating phone, took the Challenger all the way up to level ten before turning around and going back down the way he came. On the eighth floor the blue SUV came speeding up the ramp, heading straight for him. Flint said a quick prayer that the airbag would deploy as he engaged Franco and the CHIP driver in an all-out head-on game of chicken.

  Fifty-One

  Rong Lo and his team arrived at the Astronaut’s house and found it busily occupied by who they assumed were CIA agents.

  Are they here for the Astronaut or for Wen Sung? Rong wondered. He couldn’t hang around to find out. Things were sticky enough without entangling his mess with whatever the Americans were doing. Back channel relations between the two superpowers didn’t need another reason to deteriorate. Ultimately, the Astronaut doesn’t matter. Wen had been to see him, and that gave Rong Lo all the information he needed.

  Just then, he got a ping from the AT Tracking monitor. Last sighted leaving the West Edmonton Mall. He checked the time. “She’s not far ahead, let’s go!”

  By the time Rong Lo, his two operatives, and the two mercenaries arrived at the mall, the AT system showed the minivan parked at a fast food restaurant.

  One of the operatives pointed to the screen. “Think she’s still there eating?”

  Rong Lo, incensed, snapped, “Wen Sung isn’t stopping for a snack. She chose that spot intentionally. Look!” He pointed to the monitor. “She’s on a bus or subway, maybe hitched a ride . . . and even if we can figure out which one, it’ll take at least an hour, maybe longer.”

  “By then she could be anywhere.”

  Rong Lo wanted to slap the man, but instead just calmly told the driver to get to that minivan.

  Mars stood alone in the small “warehouse” of the prison paint shop amidst hundreds of gallons of paints and solvents arranged neatly on shelves. On the far back upper row, a can contained a cell phone and battery backup. There were nineteen other phones planted in various hiding places around the complex. They could never find them all. And, if somehow they did, more would be smuggled in by the guards on his payroll. Cost of doing business.

  He called Beltracchi, the man who had provided Chase with the new identities for him and Wen. “It’s time,” Mars said. “Are they ready?”

  “Not all of
them,” Beltracchi replied. “Can you give me twenty-four more hours?”

  “No! I can’t give you twenty more minutes. Go with what you have, now.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Edmonton, Canada.”

  “Okay. I’ll move them fast and far.”

  “Blind them,” Mars said in a tone both pleading and demanding.

  “Smoke and mirrors, coming up.”

  The Challenger and Blue SUV raced toward a head-on collision.

  “Ninety-seven percent chance they’ll veer away first,” 0830 said calmly to Franco.

  “So there’s a three percent chance we’re going to die!” Franco said.

  “We are traveling at approximately twelve feet per second, I estimate they are going seventeen feet per second. We are about fifty feet apart. We will impact in one point eight seconds. One point six, one point four . . . ”

  Flint knew he was dead either way . . . depending on the airbag. Franco would shoot him as soon as he discovered Chase was not in the car, and Flint wasn’t going to tell him where he went. This was all about buying time for Chase to get farther away. Flint had learned in some brutal situations—in places like Central America, Somalia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and many other grueling fights in hotspots he’d like to forget but never could—that the longer he stayed alive, the better the chance he might once again beat the impossible odds.

  Minutes earlier, when Chase told him the plan, he calculated the probabilities. They were good for Chase, not so much for him, but he couldn’t think of a better idea under the circumstance. This was it.

  “Screw you Franco, and especially you Terminator-mutant-CHIP-freak, I ain’t turning!”

  “Seven-tenths of a second, six . . . too late to avoid impact,” 0830 said as if ordering sushi.

  “Turn, turn, turn!” Franco screamed, grabbing the wheel.

  “No!” 0830 yelled, trying to wrestle the wheel from Franco.

  The SUV took the impact at the worst possible angle, with momentum and the force of the Challenger traveling downhill causing it to slam into the back of an old Porsche. The SUV’s right front tire rolled up the sloped back of the Porsche and flipped, crashing down, pinned between the Porsche and a Buick parked next to it.

  The airbag on the Challenger deployed, momentarily blinding Flint as the car crashed into the metal and concrete barrier separating his lane from the next switchback. But it kept rolling, and after shooting the airbag to deflate it, he managed to get the Challenger back under control.

  The sirens echoing inside the parking garage warned of the next confrontation. Flint knew there would be too many police vehicles and guns. He needed to avoid the floor where Chase had escaped, so he put the car in neutral and sent it on its way rolling toward the fifth floor where the Edmonton Police would find it in a few minutes. Meanwhile, he took the steps on foot and made it to the second floor skybridge just as the Challenger crashed into an oncoming squad car.

  By the time Flint made it into the adjoining Oxford Tower office building, Chase was already on a bus, blocks away, heading for his rendezvous with Wen. Flint made his way to the lobby, and from there blended into the busy pedestrian traffic, heading for the subway station a short distance away. He heard the police helicopter circling the area, but didn’t dare look up. He was hoping Franco was already in custody, which would buy Chase even more time to get lost.

  Flint tried reaching Chase, but to no surprise, his employer didn’t respond. He doesn’t want me around, Flint thought. Here’s to you finding love and no trouble. Flint believed the wisest course was to leave Chase alone in Edmonton, at least until his backup team could locate him. They’d now arrived, and Flint gave them instructions to search for Chase and be available to assist him. Meanwhile, he had a plane to catch. They were also to attempt to locate and follow the CHIPs and Franco—in case they got away or whenever they were released.

  Flint had other ways to help protect Chase, and leaving Canada might be his best chance. After making his way back to the Edmonton airport, he took the first plane back to the States, caught a connecting flight to Albuquerque, and chartered a small plane to Taos, New Mexico.

  Fifty-Two

  When Chase’s phone vibrated as he stepped off the bus, he felt as if someone had just grabbed him from behind. He actually spun around, ready to fight, before realizing it was just an incoming call. Hoping it was Boone with word of his missing parents, Chase answered his phone. During the twenty minute bus ride, he’d tried unsuccessfully to reach Boone and even Mars. Chase looked at the caller ID, disappointed to see it was Dez.

  “Derek came through!” Dez said excitedly. “He just sent his key and Lori’s, too.”

  “We’re in business,” Chase said as he walked down the sidewalk, looking for cover. Derek, one of the Garbo-three, had been an early employee when Chase and Dez had developed RAI. Not only could they completely trust him, but he worked computers like a wizard. Chase used to call Derek “RAI” as a nickname because he seemed to be always a few steps ahead of the research. “I should have known it would be Derek. Did you upload the keys?”

  “Of course. They’re waiting for you.”

  “Good. I just hope it’s not too late. Sliske has already deployed RAIN.”

  “He’s done it?” Dez asked, stunned “How?”

  “CHIPs.”

  “Then they’re out?” Dez sounded scared.

  “Two of them just tried to kill me.”

  “They know where you are!?”

  “These Cranial Hybrid Implanted People have RAI nodes inside them.” Chase spat the words bitterly. “They know everything.”

  Rong Lo sat in the front seat of the minivan that Wen had abandoned in the fast food parking lot. There wasn’t much time. He knew that whichever US intelligence agency had been at the Astronaut’s house would soon be there, but he indulged in risking a minute or two longer than perhaps he should have. Closing his eyes, Rong Lo pictured Wen driving the vehicle only a short time earlier, conversing with the brilliant Astronaut, discussing clever and advanced ways to disappear, going completely off the grid, and yet still be able to disrupt the very things that Rong Lo was trying to protect and perpetuate.

  While he and his crew had been heading to the minivan, Rong had considered all the different routes Wen could have used to flee. The massive MSS computers were busily churning out possibilities, crisscrossing algorithms with every known scrap of data on Wen Sung, Edmonton, the Astronaut, Chase Malone, and millions of additional variables that gave him a headache to think about. However, none of the answers would come soon enough. Instead of all the technical breakdowns and analysis he so often relied on, Rong Lo thought about something else: emotion. Chase Malone had gone to Vancouver to meet Wen Sung, and he was in Edmonton to try to meet her again. The city had been chosen for no other reason than it was where the Astronaut resided.

  But the Astronaut didn’t matter for the moment. Only Chase and Wen did.

  “Where are you meeting him?” Rong whispered, as if Wen were there, just out of his reach. Opening his eyes, he stared at the screen of his tablet computer. Target lines circled out from the spot where he sat. Rong zoomed in, shifted the screen several times, zoomed out and then in again, until he suddenly saw it. Rong knew “everything” about Wen Sung. Even with a billion and a half people, it was difficult to remain truly anonymous in China. Even so, Wen’s file was much larger than most, and it was that knowledge, coupled with his experience, that made him certain he’d figured out where Wen Sung would choose to meet her former lover. The place, at once romantic, and strategically appropriate—plenty of visibility, multiple escape routes, public, yet not too crowded—all fit her profile.

  As long as US intelligence, or those annoying hacks from GlobeTec hadn’t tracked her there first, Rong Lo believed if he was careful, he’d be able to execute both Wen Sung and Chase Malone, then be on a plane back to Beijing by dinnertime.

  Pyramids, he thought, a fitting place for them to die.


  Chase stared at the four glassed pyramids, impressed by their size. They rose up out of the green prairie as if placed there by aesthetically sensitive aliens. His smartphone had given him the stats—two of them were each 7,100 square feet, the other two were each 4,400 square feet. They formed a spectacular botanical garden, the Muttart Conservatory. Across the river, the skyline of Edmonton appeared more like a fortification, a city forged from a frozen land by force of will and oil money. One pyramid contained plants from tropical regions, another from arid, one temperate, and the final housed features that rotated with the seasons.

  Chase checked the area again, noticing for the first time a fifth, much smaller, pyramid in the center of the others. He smiled for a moment, allowing himself the memory of Wen and how she loved nature.

  This magical place seems made for our reunion.

  Fifty-Three

  Chase recalled that time at Beihai Park with Wen. They’d been there many times, but the night of the shooting star had been different. They didn’t know it at the time, but it was that night which had indirectly led them to the pyramids in Edmonton. Out in the middle of the lake at Beihai Park, Wen and Chase promised each other they would be true to their love forever, and wished upon that shooting star that the fates would bring them together again—this time for the rest of their lives. He’d never stopped believing.

  Chase entered the otherworldly temperate pyramid as if it were a trap, yet its lush forest of exotic trees, plants, and flowers momentarily relaxed him. It wasn’t the stunning greenery that made it seem so foreign. After being pursued by Franco and the CHIPs, the news of Lori’s death, the unknown fate of his missing parents, and the Vancouver massacre still pounding in his head, Chase felt as if he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. To suddenly find himself in such an eden confused his fragile psyche.