The Pekin Target q-10

by Adam Hall

  But now I knew where he was, and what I would have to do.

  "So the US Air Force has agreed to overfly the monastery by night, and drop you and the guide. It's the only access we've got for you. Your objective is to reach Tung Kuo-feng and talk to him. London knows he has an overall plan, of which the two political assassinations were components. We want to know what that plan is."

  The man with the sunglasses was still watching me with his rifle at rest; if I moved he'd have ample time to bring it into the aim. I proved this as an exercise: I picked up a stone the size of a fist and lobbed it into the full sunlight and within two seconds of its falling a bullet smashed into the rock just above it and dropped inert to the ground, smoking. It would be too hot to pick up, though I didn't need to examine it to know that the copper nose was flattened by the dead-angle impact, because of its force; even a.22 can push a bullet a mile away but at the end of its flight it has no more velocity than a tossed pebble; the long-range rifle is designed to produce a very high remaining velocity and that one over there could put a projectile through a man's body at. More than a thousand yards.

  I sat still again in the shadow, listening to the bird calling in the scrub to the west of me, and watching the man lower his gun.

  "If you can get the better of Tung Kuo-feng, we'll send in a chopper for you. Otherwise you must try making your own way out. If possible you should relay what information you can get to the Embassy on 5051 kHz, using Tung's radio, and duplicate it on our own wavelength. Tung should be despatched only if you're certain he won't talk or has nothing more to tell you. I shall hold myself ready to interrogate him at the monastery or wherever you can bring him; as you know, my expertise has been proved effective."

  Watching the man, I knew what to do now. If I moved to the north or south I would move directly into his fire; if I moved to the east I'd be going towards him; behind me, to the west, there was a series of low rock ridges and then open ground running two or three miles into the foothills of the next mountain range, and if I moved that way he would pick me off before I could reach cover. There was no way out in any direction, and he knew that.

  I watched him.

  "Control realises," Ferris had told me, "that the odds against you are rather high; that was why he wanted you for Jade One, and no one else. You can opt out, at this stage, as you know; but it wouldn't mean we'd then send Youngquist in, simply because we don't think Youngquist could do it; we think that you can."

  Bloody Control for you. Pat on the back and good luck, lad, we know you can do it, never fear, bloody London for you, this was a last ditch operation: throw the executive in and see what happens, never know your luck.

  The man with the sunglasses hadn't moved. He knew where I was but he couldn't see me; more accurately, he could see me but he couldn't tell rock from shadow, from this darker shadow that was his quarry.

  Not strictly true of course: London knows what it's doing; it was just that I was lonely now, and scared; there was something almost acceptable about getting shot in the back of the head: one minute you were part of all this metaphysical extravaganza and the next minute you were a hunk of chemicals with no awareness of the transition; but if I sat here staring into his gun he might eventually define my shape, and fire, and in the final millisecond I might see the thing coming for me, much too fast to give me time to dodge it: a gleam of copper light in the sunshine increasing in diameter until there it was right in front of me and moving at the speed of sound, its small mass warm from the detonation and the friction through the rifling of the barrel, its rate of spin slowing over the distance to a thousand feet per second and its initial degree of pitch damped out by gyroscopic action as it poised in timelessness an inch in front of my brow before it touched the skin and found the skull and broke the skull and found the brain and blew away the universe on this fine summer's day.

  But I would have to stay facing him, for a bit longer. And I would have to move, just a little, and with great care. I had to face him because I had to see when the gun came up, so that I could get the timing right; and I had to move, just a little, to get my flying jacket off. He wasn't using a scope sight: he was using his naked eye; if he'd had a scope sight I'd have seen him aiming the gun all the time, trying to find me; even so, I must move with great care.

  Nothing more awkward than getting out of sleeves.

  He didn't move. I would see the glint along the barrel if he raised the gun, and have time to drop low and forward, decreasing the target profile. First sleeve.

  He would be, I suppose, annoyed by now. They'd sent him down here to deal with me before I could get too close and do any damage, and even if I'd had a revolver on me there would have been no chance of a duel: he could stay out of range with that thing and make a remote kill. But I was still alive and he was aware of that: the stone I'd thrown had fooled him for two seconds — the time he'd needed to aim and fire — but he'd seen what it was immediately afterwards. So he was probably annoyed, which was an advantage to me: you bring a flicker of emotion to the gunsight and you'll fire a foot wide. Second sleeve.

  The timing was critical and I waited, drawing five deep breaths; then I raised the flying jacket and passed it slowly in front of me and to one side to let the shoulder catch the sunlight; a reflection sparked from his rifle as he brought it immediately into the aim and fired, and I had to wait through the next second while the bullet travelled the distance between us and tore the jacket from my left hand as I let it go, one sleeve flying out before it fell to the ground.

  I dropped with it and kept still.

  There was no second shot.

  After a minute I crawled sideways to the shelter of deeper rock, dragging the jacket after me and leaving tracks. The leg wound was superficial and the blood had already started to congeal; I had to open it with my nails and wait for it to ooze before I could squeeze a trickle onto the stones. In an hour I made a dozen yards, taking my time and waiting for the blood to come, squeezing and moving on with the toes of my boots dragging at the shale. Above me now was a ledge some ten feet high with a sheer drop to the west, facing the buttress that hid me from his sight; it was the best that was offered.

  There was antibiotic cream in the medical kit and I smeared it on the wound and bandaged it before I climbed to the ledge, pulling the jacket after me. My wristwatch was in my pocket and I fished for it and put it on again. It showed 06:49 as I settled face down and began waiting for him.

  19: Vigil

  Eagle to Jade One.

  Playing bricks.

  Eagle to Jade One.

  One on top of another.

  He would take his time, of course. I might be armed.

  Eagle to Jade One.

  A fourth stone, to bridge the lower three. Playing bricks with the boulders, the small ones; but it didn't have to be too fancy; it had to look natural.

  Where the hell is Ferris?

  07:12.

  Eagle to Jade One.

  In another hour the sun would clear the bluff to the east of my position and I would no longer be in shade. But then he wouldn't see me, because of the boulders. The set was live, crackling. I wanted more than that, for God's sake. This thing was a lifeline.

  Eagle to Jade One.

  The peephole was too big: all I wanted was -

  Jade One to Eagle. You're very faint.

  And very relieved.

  Eagle to Jade One. DH is dead. My present situation extremely hazardous. Will report if possible.

  Repeat that.

  Did so. He acknowledged and we broke.

  Within the next half hour I completed the low rock wall; it was built on the assumption that he would pick up the tracks I'd left for him and follow them to the area immediately below the ledge where I was waiting; I could sight through the rocks in three places, and if he looked up, all he would see was my eye, and my eye would be in shadow, and it would be narrowed. If he was a cautious man he would circle the whole area first and climb to higher ground; in that case he
would see me; but there was nothing I could do about that, except hide up in a foxhole and wait until he found me; there was no point.

  Very faint because of the mountains. Up at the monastery, if I could reach it, the reception and transmission would be a lot better. It had been good to hear his voice, even faintly.

  The executive signalled at 07:14 to say his situation was extremely hazardous. That was the last we heard of him.

  Ignore. Too much bloody imagination. Eye on the ball.

  07:46.

  09:51.

  He wasn't here yet.

  He must be very close now.

  The mountains were silent under the rising warmth of the morning; I would have expected more bird-life here; the sound of birds is reassuring, reminding of spring, when the world is new again and nothing can go wrong.

  There was open terrain below, where my flying jacket had gone jerking through the air; he could make his approach from that direction in almost a straight line without any risk, even if I were armed. Cautious bastard.

  So cautious, perhaps, that he was making a wide detour and climbing to higher ground; then he would be close enough to put one straight into me with great force, at close range.

  Has there been any further signal from the executive?

  No.

  How long has it been?

  Two and a half hours.

  Do we write him off

  Not yet. Not yet. Give me a chance.

  The scent of the pines was heavy on the air as the day grew warmer. I wondered if you'd noticed it. Isn't it lovely? Safe under her stones and unafraid.

  Something snapped and I jerked my head and stared at the rocks to my left, heart thudding and breath held as I waited.

  Nothing there. Tree bark cracking in the warmth, or dead timber splitting.

  Perhaps I should have tried making a break to the west, clambering through the tumbled rock and making a run for it across the open ground beyond, dodging like a hare while he tried to keep me centred in the sights.

  Trickle of sweat; it had sprung from the skin when the sharp sound had come a minute ago. I wiped it away from my eyes and manned the peephole again and saw him.

  He was standing perfectly still, looking at the marks on the ground; then in a moment he raised his head, gazing across the wall I had built, across the hidden glint of my eye. He looked like a Korean, young and athletic in a striped track suit and running shoes; the long Remington was slung at the horizontal in both hands, ready to swing up and fire.

  I narrowed my eye until the lids were almost together, and watched him as his head turned slowly to note the stones of my wall, studying them for a while and then passing on. The distance between us was some hundred feet. He began moving again, his head going down to follow my tracks, and when he turned to his left, towards the ledge where I was waiting, I brought my eye down to the third peephole and watched him from there.

  He stopped again, lifting his head and turning it by degrees to look around him, glancing across my shadowed eye and surveying the heights at my back. It was five or six minutes before he was satisfied; then he moved on again with his head lowered, until he saw the dark bloodspots I had left directly beneath the ledge; and now he stopped.

  An hour ago I had brushed the ledge free of loose stones, and measured the distance from the rock wall to the edge; it was the distance necessary to give momentum for the leap. The time estimated was three seconds, but if I controlled my breathing he would see me before he heard me, and that wouldn't give him long enough to swing the gun up and take aim; he shouldn't see me for at least half the total estimated time: for at least one second and a half; and he would need more than that. It was a long rifle and weighed ten or eleven pounds and he'd have to swing it upwards against the inertia.

  Of course he might move faster than I'd reckoned, and make use of the final half second before I was on him and blocking the swing of the gun. In that case I would drop straight against the muzzle and receive the shot at point blank range. The issue was unpredictable.

  His head was still lowered and I took a slow breath and whipped the muscles into movement, clearing the edge and dropping with my feet going first. He probably died before he hit the ground because I kicked downwards with my right boot and felt its impact on the side of his neck: he was much slower than I'd estimated and had only got as far as turning his head to look upwards as his peripheral vision had warned him of the changing light factor. I heard the snap of his neck and was briefly aware of sequential images: the shine of the rifle barrel swinging; the gold-rimmed sunglasses hitting the ground and for an instant showing the reflection of his face before the lenses shattered against the stones; his body meeting its shadow and blotting it out.

  I span full circle, breaking my fall with a shoulder roll and getting up as the two men on the track stopped dead and brought their revolvers into the aim.

  20: March

  Dead weight.

  The sun was much higher now, its heat throbbing in the air. I had begun making an effort not to look at my watch.

  Dead weight on my back.

  If he had started from the monastery at the time we had made our drop, it had taken him two hours to reach the area where he'd begun hunting me. It was going to take longer than that for him to return; much longer.

  The sun beat down on the three of us. Four of us. One on my back.

  Sometimes the two men spoke to each other, a few short words in low tones that I didn't understand; but the tone of the human voice is a language in itself, and universal; and I knew they were talking about the man on my back; there was grief in their voices for him, and hate for the man who had murdered him. I suppose they felt it was rough poetic justice, making me carry his body.

  One of them walked ahead, springing easily across the uneven rock in his cushioned track shoes while I laboured and stumbled under my burden; the other man followed me, and my back was already bruised from the prodding of the long rifle. Sweat trickled on me, stinging my eyes so that they watered all the time, making the flat grey rocks look like a stream bed in the wavering light. I would have said we'd been moving for three hours now, maybe rather less, because time dragged under the dead weight.

  They had tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for half an hour; then one of them had raised his revolver to aim at the centre of my forehead and I'd looked down the barrel and begun counting, for something to do; but the other man had spoken to him sharply, with authority, and the gun had been lowered. I was to be taken to the monastery, I suppose he had said, and dealt with there. The tone of the man's voice had sounded like an order, and it occurred to me that they might be military personnel out of uniform, possibly North Koreans whose uniform in the South would get them arrested.

  I had tried them with English, French, German and Russian as we'd started the march out, but had got no reaction. We had moved off as soon as they'd gestured to me to lift the dead marksman and sling him across my back; they'd seen nothing of the haversack, higher up on the ledge behind the wall I'd built, and I hadn't tried to retrieve it; that radio would have been embarrassing: it wouldn't have suited the cover I was working out.

  Staggering now across the uneven ground, the stones rippling under the tears flooding my eyes.

  The sun's heat rising towards noon.

  Dead march.

  One of his arms began swinging like a pendulum to the measure of my pace, his hand brushing across and across my chest as if he were trying to catch my attention; but he had nothing more to say to me, and I had nothing to say to him; we'd both been professionals and the match had been fairly even; he'd come close to blowing my head off, so I'd broken his neck, a good enough answer. But his arm was beginning to irritate me and I grasped his hand, a little too late to show friendship.

  The man ahead of me was following the oblique cleft towards the south-east, the way de Haven had told me I should go, the way I would have gone alone if these two hadn't heard the marksman's shots, and come down to see if he needed help. Twic
e in the last hour I'd seen the glint of blue-grey tiles higher on the ridge; we must have climbed most of the thousand feet from the flat area below where my heavy friend had hunted me.

  "What?" I asked them, and-found the sun blinding in my eyes and their hands dragging me upright: I'd just gone straight out with exhaustion. They shoved the barrel of the long blue Remington into me, like poking a pig with a stick, until the pain overwhelmed the urge to go on lying there, freed of the dead-weight load. "Oh shuddup," I told them, "don't be so fucking impatient." I suppose they didn't take it kindly that I'd dumped their friend so unceremoniously, well that was tough luck, he shouldn't have put those bloody bullets quite so close to my head.

  They humped him onto my back again and I stood there trying to adjust to the load while bright red spots dripped from me onto the stones; they'd broken the skin somewhere with that thing.

  Off we go, then, yes, my friend and I, not much of a conversationalist, you can say that about him. One foot in front of the next through the throbbing heat of the day. And out of a job, by the way: it had been worrying me. They would have written me off by now, because I hadn't sent another signal.

  Eagle to Jade One, my present situation extremely hazardous, will report if possible, so forth. Been no report, had there, it didn't look very jolly, one more ferret bitten the dust, it happens all the time. But I bet they don't send Youngquist in; he'd looked too intelligent to let London shove him into a shut-ended shambles like this one.

  Stay on your feet.

  On my feet, yes, but not your bloody business.

  If you keep on falling down they'll shoot you.

  Shuddup. Snivelling little bloody organism worried about dying, plain bloody suburban.

  They're going to shoot you up there at the monastery.

  Well, I didn't think they were going to offer me a franchise in a car wash, for Christ's sake.

  Stones swimming. One foot in front of the other.