“We have a Russian friend?” Molly asked.
Addison frowned. “Dax, you’re saying I’ve got a pilot with no plane?”
“Think how I feel.”
“Dax, armed men are hunting us.”
“That does not surprise me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dax looked down at his bruised knuckles. “Kid, before I met you, I had two good fists, one good plane, and zero black eyes.”
“I wouldn’t say you had a good plane; it was okay at best,” said Addison.
“She was better than nothing, which is what I’ve got now.”
“C’mon,” said Addison, forcing Dax to down a fresh glass of water. “We’re going to the airport. How hard can it be to find an airplane? It’s not like they can just up and fly away.” He patted sawdust from Dax’s leather jacket and waved a warning finger before the pilot could respond. “Dax, losing airplanes is not acceptable. I want to let you know that I am seriously reconsidering our employment situation.”
“So am I, kid. So am I.”
• • • • • •
Addison tore through the dusty, winding streets of Kashgar. Cutting through the market, he spotted triads combing the crowd. Mr. Jacobsen, tongue flapping in the wind, had no trouble keeping up with Addison’s team. Dax, on the other hand, kept pausing to clutch his ribs and wince.
It was when Addison was sidestepping between vendor stalls that he caught a glimpse of the ancient Mongol.
Addison’s brain could not make any sense of it. Here he was, running through the present day, and there—across the alleyway—stood a vision of the thirteenth century. The Mongol wore plate mail, a full quiver of arrows, and a tangled beard. His hair was a long black ponytail on the top of his head. In his right hand he gripped a spear. His coal-black eyes stared directly at Addison. Addison did not make a regular habit of being spied on by ancient Mongols, and he found this sight particularly arresting. He skidded to a halt and backed up a few steps to take a second look. But by the time he had disentangled himself from a sprinting Molly, the Mongol had vanished. Addison blinked and rubbed his eyes. He had no time for a psychological evaluation. Clearing his head with a few quick shakes, he powered back into a sprint.
Triads shouted across the market square and began shoving their way through the crowds. Addison raced past carts selling nuts, roots, spices, and Persian carpets; stalls selling sweets, knives, musical instruments, and Uyghur hats; street hawkers shilling Tajik garments, honeys, tamarinds, and kitchen utensils; herders auctioning sheep, donkeys, goats, horses, camels, and yaks. What Addison really needed was a bicycle, but nobody had one of those.
Addison spotted the potholed road leading to the airport. He took the turn at full tilt and found himself with a face full of Russian belly. He staggered back a few paces to see Boris, the crew-cut gangster from the Jade Tiger restaurant, folding his brawny arms across his broad wrestler’s chest. Addison was getting altogether fed up with racing around corners and smacking into people, but his manners had not yet deserted him. “I beg your pardon.”
“Addison Cooke,” spat the Russian. “You vile, pathetic son of a donkey.”
“Present,” said Addison.
“You are the impish kid who finished off Vladimir Ragar, trapping him in that Incan treasure chamber.”
“Vladimir Ragar? That vile, pathetic son of a donkey?” said Addison. “Why would anyone care what happens to him? I would expect you to thank me.”
“He was my brother.”
“Ah.” Addison removed his ivy cap, rotating it a few times in his nervous hands. “Right, then. My condolences.” He had missed the basket but still thought he could grab the rebound. He was not necessarily afraid of tall, angry, muscle-bound men, per se. But Boris was just a tall, angry, muscle-bound man in the same way the Sahara was just a rather large beach. “Listen, I think we may have gotten off to a bad start,” he began.
“You’re going to get off to a worse end,” said Boris.
Apparently, Addison thought, cooler heads were not going to prevail. The rest of his team caught up behind him, assessed Boris’s intimidating physique, and maintained a healthy distance. Addison thought that with Dax’s help they might be a match for Boris. But when he caught the wary look in Dax’s eye, he realized Dax had already fought Boris enough for one day.
“How,” said Addison, searching for a fertile topic of conversation, “did you find your way to Kashgar?” He steeled himself for a fight and was pleasantly surprised that Boris seemed to prefer to continue chatting.
“My team tracked Madame Feng’s flight to Kashgar. We decided to let her find the clue. We’ve surrounded the airport. She will have a hard time escaping.”
“Well,” said Addison, finding himself on firmer ground, “we don’t have the clue. What do you need us for?” He did not particularly feel like a stop-and-chat. He would really have preferred to keep running straight for the airport. The thing of it was, he couldn’t help but notice Raj uncoiling a climbing rope from his backpack and clipping it firmly to a fence post with a carabiner. He figured it was best to keep Boris talking until he knew Raj’s angle.
“I am under special orders to capture you,” said Boris, taking a step closer to Addison.
“Orders from whom?”
“Vrolok Malazar.”
Addison’s blood froze at the sound of the name. “When you say Vrolok Malazar, you don’t by any chance mean the same Vrolok Malazar who hired Professor Ragar to kidnap my aunt and uncle?”
Boris nodded, feeling he was finally making some progress with Addison.
“The same Vrolok Malazar,” Addison continued, “who has a strange vendetta against my entire family?”
“The very same,” said Boris.
“I see.” Addison did not think they could be talking about two different Vrolok Malazars. He was now extremely invested in the conversation, but saw Raj clip a second carabiner onto Boris’s rearmost belt loop. Boris was now, unknowingly, tethered to a fence post. Addison decided their conversation had run its natural course. Besides, a few triads were now scouting the opposite courtyard. He cocked two fingers to his cap in a polite salute. “Well, tell Vrolok Malazar that Addison Cooke says hello.”
Addison turned and fled. He wasn’t proud of this; it just seemed like the right thing to do.
Boris raced after him. The big Russian made it twenty feet before the slack ran out of Raj’s rope and snapped taut. Boris, unfortunately, had poured on a good head of steam. When the rope stopped short, Boris ran right out of his pants.
There was a violent tearing of fabric. Boris, surprised to find himself suddenly in his underwear, took a few uncertain steps, unsure whether to maintain his pursuit.
A crowd of women in head scarves, carrying buckets from the well, tittered and pointed at Boris. A goat herder joined the laughter.
Boris decked the goat herder in the jaw and set to work trying to steal the man’s pants. The goat herder’s brothers joined the fray, fighting to keep the man’s pants on their rightful owner. A fierce tug-of-war ensued.
Addison knew this was the perfect moment to exit stage left, but he couldn’t resist doubling back to where Boris’s pants dangled on the end of Raj’s rope. He relieved the pockets of their contents. Before Boris could spot him, he sprinted after his team, heading for the Kashgar airport.
Chapter Seventeen
Escape from Kashgar
ADDISON’S TEAM BARRELED TOWARD the airfield like they were outrunning a cattle stampede. Molly spread her arms wide and halted the group, beckoning everyone to duck low behind the fueling station. “Triads,” she whispered, gulping for breath, “everywhere.”
Addison scanned the perimeter of the airfield. One by one, he spotted gang members, carefully concealed behind tractors and trailers and lying prone on the roofs of the hangars. The triads had the airport c
ompletely covered.
“It’s a good strategy,” said Raj. “Easier to watch the airport than to search the entire city.”
Addison nodded. “What they don’t know is that the Russians are watching the airport, too.”
“So how do we get out of here?”
“We’ve got to take Dax’s plane from the Russians.”
“That’s stealing!” said Molly.
“They stole it first! If you steal something that’s stolen, that’s the opposite of stealing—that’s un-stealing! We’re un-stealing his plane!”
“Okay, fine. But if we’re going to un-steal an airplane, don’t we need the keys?”
“Way ahead of you, Mo.” Addison held up the keys he’d stolen from Boris’s pants.
“Who are you guys?” asked Dax.
Nobody bothered to answer him. Molly pointed to Dax’s Apache parked far away across the dusty airstrip. “The plane is totally exposed. We’ll be spotted running to it.”
“Okay,” said Addison. “We sneak into the airport from the north end. It’s a no-brainer.”
“Only because you haven’t got one,” said Molly. “The Russians are up there.”
Addison studied the north side of the tarmac and glimpsed leather-jacketed mobsters crouched behind the wheels of parked cargo planes. “Alaric the Visigoth!”
“Who?” asked Eddie.
“Enemy of Rome,” said Molly, blowing the stray strand of hair from her eyes. “We need a decent plan.”
“All right, Mo,” said Addison. “What do you suggest?”
“Mayhem.” Molly riffled through the gear in her father’s survival kit. She flicked a butane lighter and tossed it at the airplane fueling station. The same fueling station, it should be noted, in which they were currently hiding.
Addison, Dax, Eddie, and Raj, all popped their mouths open in shock. Even Mr. Jacobsen seemed to sense that this was an apocalyptically bad idea.
A puddle of spilled fuel ignited, sending flames racing toward the giant gas tanks used to fill the airplane engines.
Addison had already done his fair share of running for the day. He would never have guessed his tired legs were capable of the burst of speed that propelled him out of his hiding place and across the tarmac. A human sneeze travels at forty miles per hour. A human voice travels at seven hundred miles per hour. And a thought can travel from neuron to neuron across a brain at one hundred miles per second. Addison beat all of these speed records in his race from the burning fuel tanks.
Molly chased after them. She assumed there would be an explosion. She had no idea it would be only slightly larger than a volcanic eruption. A blast of heat and sound raged behind her as if she were being chased by a dragon. The pressure wave nearly knocked her to the ground. All she could do was continue running for her life as chunks of asphalt and concrete rained down from the sky. She glanced back to see a fireball rising into the air from the torn wreckage of the airstrip. She felt a twinge of guilt about destroying the airport, until she remembered that the airport had been in pretty bad shape to begin with.
Once Addison realized he had outrun the specter of death, he was immediately overwhelmed with pride for his sister. “Fine work, Molly!”
Triads were diving for cover across the tarmac.
Dax loped up to the group, wiping soot from the back of his neck. “Who are you guys?”
Addison allowed himself to briefly wrap a proud arm around Molly’s shoulders. “We’re Cookes!” He turned back to the airstrip. “C’mon, let’s get that plane!”
The group ankled it along a row of parked airplanes. Addison began hearing loud pops and noticing chunks of metal tearing from metal fuselages in angry blossoms of sparks. He was an eternally optimistic person, yet he could not help but form the distinct impression that he was being peppered with bullets. “Is that gunfire?”
“Of course it’s gunfire!” Dax shouted, covering his head with his arms.
Addison felt there was no need to take that sort of tone, particularly when one is already dealing with being fired upon.
“The Russians are aiming at the Chinese,” Dax growled. “We’re in their cross fire.”
The gunfire on the tarmac was growing a bit too hot. Addison waved the team into an airplane hangar, where they squatted low to the ground.
“We need to hunker down in a bunker!” Eddie shouted. “We need a bunker hunker!”
Mr. Jacobsen whined softly.
“What we need is a new plan!” Molly called over the din of gunshots.
Addison gasped for breath. “This is the pig’s whistle.” Bullets hammered the corrugated walls of the hangar like baseball bats on a steel drum. He could still hear the roaring flames of the burning fuel depot and the shouts of men fighting the fire. He tried to think, but his brain had the clarity of three drunken bears fighting in a bouncy castle. Also the bears were wearing tutus. And party hats. One of them strummed a ukelele. What was he supposed to be thinking about? Ah, yes. A plan.
He crawled to a parked equipment truck, opened the door, and was relieved to find the keys in the center console. Sometimes Providence drops a few pennies in your tip jar. Addison turned the ignition, laid a spud wrench down on the accelerator, and shifted the truck into gear. It set off across the tarmac at a jaunty five miles per hour, aiming vaguely for Dax’s plane.
“How does this help?” shouted Molly.
“We run beside it, sheltered from bullets!”
Addison trotted alongside the moving pickup. His team hurried after him. Unfortunately, the truck continued to pour on speed, and they were soon sprinting to keep up. “Nothing like a refreshing jog to restore the spirits,” he gasped.
The truck pulled ahead and was building a distinct lead. Addison began to have his doubts.
“I don’t think this is a very good idea,” said Molly. “The truck could crash into Dax’s plane. It could head to the wrong plane entirely. If it gets hit by a bullet, the tank could explode. This is extremely dangerous!”
“Hey, you don’t have to convince me,” said Addison. “I think this is a terrible plan.”
“Well, then, why are we doing it?”
“I couldn’t think up anything better!”
Fresh bullets winged overhead. Addison was finding it difficult to maintain his normally cheerful outlook on life. The truck began charting its own course, heading off the tarmac and on toward Uzbekistan. “Run for the airplane!”
Molly did not feel Addison was in a position to offer direction at this point. “Don’t give me any more orders!”
“Is that an order?” asked Addison.
“Run on the other side of me,” shouted Molly. “I want you to get shot first!”
Addison turned to Raj, sprinting alongside him. “Sisters, am I right?”
“Tell me about it,” said Raj. “I have three of them.”
More gunfire erupted.
Addison was no great runner. It might be said he was a better swordsman. But somehow, in the chaos of dodging gunfire, it was Addison who reached the Apache first. He unlocked the door, leapt inside, and jammed the keys into the ignition. The twin propellers roared to life. Addison released the wheel brake and the plane began to roll forward. “Get in, Dax! I don’t know how to drive this thing!”
Dax was pinned down by gunfire, crouching behind the wheel of a Cessna.
Eddie launched into the cockpit next, sailing in horizontally and crashing into Addison. Addison was forced into the passenger seat. Eddie found himself alone behind the wheel of the moving plane.
“Don’t let Eddie drive anything!” Molly shouted, remembering the time he had crashed a limousine into an Ecuadoran fountain. Sprinting alongside the moving aircraft, she and Raj managed to leap aboard the wing runner and clamber inside the cabin. “Great! Everyone’s on board except the one person who knows how to fly!”
> Mr. Jacobsen hopped aboard in a great bounding leap. He favored Addison with a great, slobbering lick from nose to ear. “At least we have a copilot,” said Addison.
The plane, picking up speed, was drifting farther and farther from its pilot. Eddie grabbed the nose wheel and steered the plane into a U-turn. Dax, still stiff from his bar fight, limped across the runway.
A few triads raced across the Apache’s path, brandishing weapons, but Eddie guided the plane straight toward them, its whipping propeller blades chasing the triads right off the tarmac. Eddie laughed maniacally, mad with power.
Dax ducked raking gunfire and reached the plane as Eddie was taxiing onto the one runway not completely gutted by Molly’s fuel explosion. A bullet grazed past Dax’s head and struck the Apache’s dashboard, obliterating the plastic frog.
“Frog down!” shouted Addison.
Eddie slithered into the backseat.
Dax scrambled on board, sealed the cabin door, and seized the controls. He stroked the broken plastic frog with one finger and gnashed his teeth. “That’s not good.”
Triads stormed the runway.
Addison spotted his Aunt Delia and Uncle Nigel hunkered down next to Madame Feng. They were hiding by an equipment shed as Russians raced past.
Dax opened the throttle, and the plane bucked forward like a sprinter at the starter pistol. The plane bounced and rattled down the pocked and gutted airfield. Triads took potshots before diving out of the plane’s speeding path.
“Why aren’t we taking off?” shouted Molly.
“There’s no frog on this dashboard,” said Dax.
“If the plane blows up, the way to survive a fire is by—”
“Not now, Raj!”
The runway bumped and jerked the plane, shaking them like a can of spray paint. Addison fastened his seat belt. “Can’t you fly better than this?”
“What can I say, my copilot’s a dog!” Dax clutched the throttle and gritted his teeth. Everyone was a critic. The edge of the runway raced toward the windshield. Bullets pegged the tail rudder. With only feet to spare, the Apache’s nose cleared the ground. The plane vaulted into the sky, Kashgar sliding away into the distance.
Addison Cooke and the Tomb of the Khan Page 12
