The Ethan Galaal Series: Books 1 - 3

by Isaac Hooke

  "When you—" she began, then swallowed audibly. "When you went so far ahead, I thought you were going to abandon me."

  "I'd never abandon you." He tried to make his voice as soothing as possible. "I'm here now. And I'm not going to let you go." He massaged her fingers gently, hoping it would help restore some sensation. "I'm here."

  Her breathing began to slow and after several more moments finally resembled something close to normal.

  "How are you feeling?" Ethan said.

  "Better."

  "Good. Are you ready to—"

  "No," she said. "I'm sorry, Ethan. I can't do this. I thought I could. I really did. But I can't. Go on without me."

  "You can do this," he insisted. "You're a highly trained special operative. You don't give up. It's not in your nature."

  "You're right, but—" Bretta hesitated.

  "What's wrong?"

  "In all the tests Sam gave me, I only ever failed one of them: the test designed to invoke claustrophobia."

  "Ah."

  "Something about crawling through tight spaces always got to me." Bretta forced a laugh. "Go figure. Sam hired me anyway. She said in my line of work, I'd be spending more time masked in a niqab than crawling around in sewers, and if I could withstand the claustrophobia of the veil, then I was good to go."

  Ethan wished he could see her face in the dark. "You failed the claustrophobia test."

  "Yes."

  He tried his best to project calm reassurance into his tone. "But we all know the problem with tests, don't we?"

  "They're not representative of the real world?" Bretta tried, her voice still shaky.

  "Certainly. Even more importantly, when you're taking one, you're always aware that it's only a test. You know your life isn't truly in danger, so you have no real incentive to keep going, other than to receive a passing grade. You know you can stop at any time, and while you might fail, you'll be safe. Your life won't end.

  "The real world doesn't work that way. When you're out here, in the field, and actually faced with a life or death situation, where you know that if you give up you'll almost certainly die, that's when you realize the sheer worthlessness of all the tests you took. Nothing prepares you for the real world more than the real world itself. Out here the only way to pass the test is by not giving up. All that matters is whether you want to live or die. So make your choice, Bretta. Live or die. Which is it?"

  No answer.

  "I said, which is it?"

  "Live." Her voice had never sounded so meek.

  "You can do this. Trust me. Are you ready?"

  "Yes."

  "Then let's get the hell out of here." He took a step forward, leading her by the hand.

  "Ethan?" she said.

  "What?"

  "Please don't let go."

  A quip came to mind, but he held it back. He wasn't going to mock her, not then, not when she was at her most vulnerable.

  He heard her bump the suitcase as she stepped over it; she halted a moment, bending her legs sideways, drawing him down. He guessed she was picking up the metal container with her trailing hand.

  "Leave it," Ethan said.

  "After all the trouble we went through to get those files," Bretta said. "I'm not leaving them behind."

  "Suit yourself." He paused. "Get it?"

  "Very punny. Though you probably should have said, suitcase yourself."

  He was relieved her sense of humor was returning at least, even if she sounded like a shell of her former self.

  Hand in hand they advanced sideways through the claustrophobic darkness.

  After about ten minutes a terrible smell permeated the rock passageway. It was similar to the fetor of a dead animal, with a hint of sulfur. He nearly gagged.

  "And I thought Hong Kong smelled bad on the outside," Ethan said.

  "Was that a joke?"

  "A Star Wars reference," Ethan said. "When Han cuts the tauntaun— never mind."

  "Let's keep the Star Wars references to a minimum, please."

  "You know you like them," Ethan teased.

  She didn't respond.

  He squeezed her palm. She tightened her fingers in return and that was the only answer he needed.

  He spotted a glow up ahead. "I think I see something."

  Ethan increased his pace, hope welling inside him.

  The glow was dim, less than the light cast by a quarter moon. As he came closer, the glow broadened. Unfortunately, his feet also began to splash in stagnant water.

  "Oh God," Bretta said from the edge of the liquid. "I'm barefoot you know."

  "It's no better in Louis Vuitton lace ups, believe me." Ethan did his best to ignore the sickening, squishy feeling between his toes.

  He continued forward, expecting Bretta to balk, but to her credit she followed him without a word of complaint. He tightened his fingers reassuringly. She squeezed back.

  Eventually the glow was right in front of him. Ethan wasn't quite sure what he was looking at, however. With his hand, he explored the area around the glow and realized a waist-high storm drain passed through the rock corridor. Someone had smashed a jagged hole into the concrete with a sledgehammer. The glow came from beyond that hole, as did the smell.

  Ethan bent over and peered inside the gap. To the left, the tunnel was pure black. To the right, light shimmered from an opening in the distance.

  "Almost there," Ethan said. He released Bretta and, using the concrete around the gap as a handhold, he lowered his legs inside. His feet splashed in the ankle-deep flow.

  He bent his knees and brought his upper body through the hole, followed by his head and arms. When he was inside, he leaned forward, crouching in the tight confines, but slipped. He planted his hands in the flow, arresting his fall before his face struck the foul liquid. He lifted one hand above the surface and experimentally rubbed his fingers. The skin felt slimy.

  Though Hong Kong had dedicated storm drain and sewage systems, in theory preventing the contents from mixing, sometimes buildings in Hong Kong improperly connected their sewers to the storm drains, either accidentally or illegally. Plus, farmers routinely allowed livestock to relieve themselves in the open watercourses called nullahs that were part of the storm system. So the drains weren't always sewage-free. Then there was the urban runoff that contaminated the water in the storm drains, which contained gas, oil, heavy metals, garbage, fertilizers, pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and all sorts of suspect chemicals.

  Ethan wondered how the homeless could ever live in storm drains, given the smell, let alone the health risks. Not to mention the possibility of drowning in one's sleep.

  He crawled forward on hands and knees, making room for Bretta. She lowered herself through the gap and into the questionable liquid without qualms.

  In the dim glow he noticed that, unlike him, she was trying to advance at a crouch, refusing to dip anything but her ankles into the flow. Her thighs must have been burning from the exertion: her knees were way up into her chest, with her calves touching her hamstrings. Her shadowy form looked like a folded-up praying mantis.

  Ethan shook his head but didn't say anything. He wrinkled his nose and continued onward, approaching the source of the glow, which had widened into the size of a fist ahead: likely the drain outlet.

  He heard splashing behind him. Glancing over his shoulder at the dark outline of Bretta's body, he realized she'd switched to a more manageable hands and knees position. She slid something along beside her. After a moment he realized it was the suitcase. She kept the container vertical so that only a quarter of the case was submersed in the liquid at a time.

  "Hang in there," Ethan said.

  In a few moments he reached the opening. The waters of Victoria Harbour awaited beyond, the city lights shimmering invitingly on the surface.

  There was only one problem.

  A metallic grating sealed off the outlet.

  He tugged at the parallel vertical bars but they didn't budge. "Ah, hell."

/>   He studied the grating for a moment. It wasn't flush with the opening, but seemed to be connected right outside the outlet. It was a sliding gate, he realized. A padlock secured the gate to a horizontal bar near the bottom.

  Ethan tried to open the padlock, to no avail. He heaved and heaved, but it wouldn't give.

  He attempted to kick out the horizontal bar. No good. He retrieved the P250 from his IWB holster, hit the mag release to let the magazine drop, racked the slide to eject the cartridge from the chamber, and then used the handgun as a hammer, repeatedly slamming it into the padlock. Nothing.

  He discarded the P250 in frustration and rested his body against the concave wall. Panting, he shut his eyes.

  "Are you done yet, Hercules?" Bretta said.

  He shot her an annoyed look. "I can't believe you think our situation is funny. You know we're going to have to climb all the way back up there, don't you?"

  Bretta brought her knees forward and returned to a crouching position, then swung herself against the concrete beside him, using it to support her lower back. She set the suitcase over her bent knees and, using it like a table, placed her purse on top. She twisted the seahorse clasp, opened the purse, and retrieved a small item from the secret compartment. She handed it to him.

  "Sam says you're a huge fan of these things," she explained. "Myself, I never saw the attraction."

  The item had a soft, leathery feel, with a clasp of its own. A case of some kind, then.

  Ethan opened it and held the contents to his face. Under the shimmering light he was able to discern various lock picks and files.

  "I love you," Ethan told her.

  "I know," she said.

  32

  Ethan and Bretta reached the shore and climbed the barnacle-encrusted wooden piles of a pier to the walkway, then made their way onto the nearby promenade. The little dip in the Victoria Harbour had proven exhausting, but at least it had cleaned their bodies of the storm drain outflow.

  Since the ocean had destroyed Bretta's phone there was no way to contact Paul and the limousine. Instead, she hailed a cab along the busy road using the palm-down finger-flutter method popular throughout China. She negotiated with the driver in Cantonese, and convinced him to allow them inside with wet clothes. The driver retrieved two garbage bags from the glovebox and threw them onto the backseats.

  Ethan sat on his assigned bag. "I didn't know you spoke Cantonese."

  "There are a lot of things you don't know about me," Bretta said coldly. She was back to her old self.

  Tradecraft prevented the pair from returning to the Ritz-Carlton hotel, so they had the driver bring them to the forty-five story Four Seasons instead, almost directly across the waterfront from the Ritz-Carlton. Ethan chose a harbor-view room with a single king-sized bed for seven hundred U.S. dollars. He supposed he could have splurged on something like the presidential suite for five grand, but it seemed a waste, especially considering how much Defense Department money they'd already spent that night.

  The desk manager demanded they pay for the room entirely up front, probably because of the soggy clothing he and Bretta wore. Since his wallet had been taken by the Triad, Ethan waved Bretta forward and she paid with her credit card—the ocean water shouldn't have affected the magnetic stripe.

  When the charge went through the manager's entire demeanor changed. Bowing and complimenting, he personally escorted them to their room on the twenty-ninth floor.

  "Never seen someone bow so much outside Japan," Ethan commented when the man had gone.

  He was somewhat impressed by the marble floored entry foyer. Artwork hung from its silk-paneled walls. Beyond, the combined living room and bedroom had furnishings sculpted out of tiger maple, with a well-stocked minibar and Nespresso machine. Gold leaf covered the wall behind the huge plasma TV and bed frame.

  He engaged the deadbolt, slid the security chain into place, and shoved a small table in front of the door. Then he retrieved the radio-frequency detecting ink pen from his pocket and activated it.

  "That thing survived the dip in the bay?" Bretta asked.

  "Apparently." He tossed it to her. "Would you mind getting started? I can't stand salt in my hair."

  "Fine." She set down Chen Tang's suitcase and began wearily sweeping the place with the pen. "It's not like we're going to be doing lots of talking tonight, anyway."

  "You know protocol," Ethan said, ignoring the very slight innuendo she'd made.

  He laid out his clothes to dry on the various towel bars in the full marble, double-sinked bathroom. He grabbed a shampoo from the L'Occitane toiletries and showered in the walk-in stall beside the bathtub. When he was done, he wrapped a plush white towel around his waist and ordered Bretta to take a bath.

  Bretta returned the pen, indicated the areas she'd covered, then shut herself in the bathroom.

  As he swept the room, Ethan heard the bathtub filling up. He longed to go inside that tub with her, but forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand.

  It took thirty tiring minutes to search the room. When that was done, he headed toward the bathroom.

  He knocked on the door. "Done yet?"

  Silence.

  He rapped again and peered inside.

  Warm, humid air swept over him. His nostrils were instantly greeted by the pleasant scent of bubble bath.

  Bretta was lying in the middle of a thick layer of bubbles; most of her body was submersed, save for her face and the flamingo-like leg bent above the surface. Her eyes were closed.

  "Guess not," Ethan said. "Gonna sweep the room."

  Her eyes opened. She gazed at him, the desire obvious in her expression, but she said nothing.

  Ethan made his way around the marble bathroom, running the pen over the various surfaces. He felt Bretta's uncomfortable gaze on him the whole time. He was conscious of his exposed upper body, and he kept worrying that the towel wrapped around his waist would fall down at some inopportune moment. When he was almost done, she spoke.

  "Why don't you join me?" she said in a husky voice.

  Ethan glanced askance at her. "Don't tempt me."

  "I'm tempting you."

  His heart pounded in his chest and it took all his willpower to resist. "I have a policy. I don't sleep with operatives or assets during a mission. It's gotten me in trouble in the past."

  "What kind of trouble?" She still had a seductive tone.

  Ethan ignored the question and finished his sweep of the bathroom. He purposely didn't look at her, knowing that if he did, his will might falter.

  As he left the bathroom, Bretta said: "Would you be a dear and call the concierge for me? I'd like a vibrator. The Thrusting Jack Rabbit by California Exotic Novelties. Waterproof version. Make sure to include four AA batteries."

  Ethan smiled snidely. "Would you like any lube with that?"

  "I won't be needing any," Bretta said. "Thanks though."

  Ethan shut the door a little harder than was warranted. He wasn't sure what made him angrier: the fact that he hadn't taken her up on her earlier offer, or that she was replacing him with some mechanical device.

  Thrusting Jack Rabbit.

  He dialed the front desk via the room phone and was transferred to the English-speaking concierge. When Ethan gave the vibrator request, the concierge didn't balk: in fact the man seemed eager, and he promised that there was always a sex shop open somewhere in Hong Kong no matter the time of night.

  Before he hung up, Ethan asked the concierge if he could drop off some fresh clothes for them in the morning when the major department stores were open. He gave precise measurements for himself, and told the man to bring multiple sizes for Bretta to try on.

  Ethan thanked him, hung up, and then dialed another local number he'd memorized.

  "Tucson Industries," came a cheerful female voice.

  "Lost on a dark shore," Ethan said.

  There was a pause at the other end. Then: "Address, please."

  "Four Seasons. Room 2910."

  "
Thank you," came the reply. "Watch for the sunrise at dawn." The line went dead.

  Tucson Industries was a useful little DIA front for stranded operatives—with luck, Sam would arrange to get them some new communications gear by morning. The last phrase the operator had spoken was a coded message indicating the security password he would need to unlock any telecommunication devices he received. The first two letters of the last word, DA, represented hexadecimal codes, while the first letter of the preceding word indicated how to interpret them. Since the preceding first letter was "a," he translated each code individually to decimal; D was 13, A, 10, making the unlock password 1310.

  He flopped down on the king-sized bed and closed his eyes, wanting nothing more than to sleep.

  A knock came at the door.

  Cursing, Ethan got up and peered through the peephole. A young Asian bellhop stood there, dressed in white with a red beret on his head.

  "What!" Ethan said.

  "Delivery."

  From Tucson Industries? That was quick.

  "Just a second." Ethan slid the blocking table to the side and opened the door.

  "Good evening, sir," the bellhop said, ignoring the fact that Ethan was clothed only in a waist towel. "Your delivery."

  The bellhop handed Ethan a heat-sealed clamshell whose contents were readily visible. The packaging proudly proclaimed: "Thrusting Action Jack Rabbit. Six speeds of thrusting motion. A bunny for every honey." Four AA batteries were taped to the back.

  "Uh, thanks," Ethan said.

  "Welcome." The bellhop waited expectantly.

  Ethan retrieved Bretta's purse and grabbed some soggy banknotes. He stuffed the bills into the man's hands.

  "It's not for me," Ethan said.

  The bellhop smiled knowingly.

  Ethan quickly shut the door, replaced the security chain, deadbolt, and blocking table, then stalked to the bathroom. He tossed Bretta the package.

  It landed on the floor beside the tub and slid loudly into the acrylic side, making her jump. When she saw him standing in the doorway she gave him a mean look.