Vital Force

by Trevor Scott

  She bowed her head to him. “Wo dong. I understand.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  The two of them got out and headed across the square toward the river. By the time they reached the edge of the square and crossed the snowy park to the edge of the river, darkness had set in completely over this part of Russia-a place that reminded Li more of Manchuria.

  Laughing Dragon stopped suddenly, his hand on her arm. “We talk English,” he said to her. “More preciously, I talk English.”

  “Precisely,” she corrected.

  “Exactly. How else I learn words meaning to Abby Road album?”

  Always back to the Beatles, she thought.

  Further up the river a figure appeared from behind some pine trees, his hulking figure a silhouette against the industrial skyline across the river.

  Laughing Dragon pulled Li forward.

  “Close enough,” came a harsh voice, heavily accented, followed by a gloved hand extended outward.

  The two of them stopped, the only sound the soft flow of water rippling against a pile of rocks on the river’s edge. She knew nothing of the man. That was out of necessity, as always. He was Russian. That’s all she knew. From five meters she could not see his face.

  “What go up must come down,” Laughing Dragon said.

  “Only if someone shoots it down,” the Russian said.

  Coded pleasantries over, the Russian slid his hand inside his wool coat and extracted what appeared to be a bundle wrapped in plastic. He threw the package and it landed at the feet of Laughing Dragon, who reached down for it.

  “Wait,” the man in the shadows said. “Wait until I go. Everything is there.” With that, the man backed behind the pines and was not seen again.

  Poor tactics, she thought.

  Laughing Dragon glanced at her. “You think he not very smart?”

  “We could have had another person up the river,” she said.

  He let out a more subdued laugh and then pointed at a red dot bouncing around Li’s chest. “And we both die here in Khabarovsk on bank of river.”

  She looked around trying to find the source of the red dot, knowing she would be dead before she heard the sound if the shooter dared to pull the trigger.

  Her boss reached down for the bundle and then nodded for them to head back toward the car.

  “Why not open the package?” she said, looking around for the red dot.

  “It there. It always there. If not, it be last time.”

  They shuffled across the square to the car. Once inside, Laughing Dragon opened the package. There was a stack of American dollars, a series of photos, and instructions in English. Which was one reason she had been called in. Her boss could speak English, but his reading was limited to children’s books. He shoved the bills inside his jacket and handed her the instructions.

  She looked them over, memorized her part, and then set the paper on the seat next to her. Although she had just gotten off a flight from San Francisco that morning, catching a connecting flight from Beijing, she now saw she would be heading back to America as soon as she could catch a return flight. She would have to push her contact there. Hurry him into something she knew would include more gratuitous sex. Although that repulsed her, she knew the reward would be well worth the unpleasantness. But first she would have to work here with Laughing Dragon.

  ●

  Hours later, twenty miles southeast of the missile test site, in a bar on the outskirts of Khabarovsk, Jake Adams leaned back in his chair and poured another shot of vodka down his throat, Yuri Pushkina doing the same and then both slamming the glass to the table.

  Letting out a deep breath, Jake said, “All right, that’s the last one, Yuri.”

  The Russian laughed and then his face became serious. “Come on, my friend. This is my retirement.”

  Putting his arm around the Russian, Jake whispered, “It wasn’t your fault. They’ll see that.”

  Yuri shook his head. “They always find someone to blame for these things.”

  “Even so. You’ll have your pension.”

  “I could work at McDonald’s in Moscow. I’m sure they hire me.”

  Jake glanced about the smoky room, which was crowded mostly with off-duty soldiers and tungsten miners, still dressed in grubby denim overalls. The vodka had set his head spinning, but his old friend would need his counsel and companionship. Jake would have to switch to beer, though. He stopped a waitress and ordered a beer and another shot of vodka.

  “I don’t want beer, Jake,” Yuri said to him.

  “That’s for me. No more vodka.”

  An hour passed. Patrons came and went, but the two of them continued their assault on the Khabarovsk alcohol supply.

  Yuri finally moved his chair closer to Jake, put his arm around his neck, and said, “I shouldn’t tell you this.” He hesitated as his eyes shifted about the room. “But I’m sure you already know this. My superiors know what happened to our missile.” He raised his bushy brows and smiled at Jake. It was the same smile he had displayed when Jake awoke in the back of the taxi a the Volgograd airport years ago-Yuri in civilian clothes then and extolling his virtues for saving Jake’s ass.

  When Yuri didn’t elaborate, Jake said, “And?”

  “And I think you know.” He pulled his arm from Jake, crossed both of them over his thick chest, and then leaned back in his chair.

  Jake had no idea what in the hell was going on. “I’m lost, Yuri. I think I’ve had too much to drink.”

  “You know.” His voice resonated and brought stares from two young soldiers at the closest table.

  Shaking his head, Jake said, “No, I don’t.”

  “Your fucking plane.” This time Yuri whispered loudly, his words slurred.

  Jake wasn’t sure what in the hell he was talking about. But he was aware of the two soldiers, who were nowhere near their level of inebriation. “Let’s get some air, Yuri.”

  The large Russian started to his feet and his chair slipped out and crashed to the floor, but Yuri recovered before following the chair to the wooden surface.

  As the two of them got to the sidewalk, Jake realized that the February air had dipped down toward zero. The Russian leaned up against the brick building and lit a cigarette, bringing the tip to a bright orange.

  “What the hell you trying to tell me, Yuri?”

  “You know.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  The man considered him carefully, watching Jake’s facial expression. “You don’t know, my friend.” He sucked on the cigarette, let out a stream of smoke and said, “The stipulation to this test from the Americans was to observe the test from a plane over the Sea of Okhotsk. You know this much?”

  “No. Remember, Yuri, you brought me into this. I have nothing to do with the U.S. government. I was here as an independent observer.”

  The Russian considered this.

  Jake was as confused as a child in a physics lecture. He had been living in Innsbruck, Austria, where he had been for the last few years running a private security firm, when he had gotten the call from Yuri, followed by a round-trip airline ticket from Munich to Vladivostok, Russia, and an expedited visa for his passport. Based on his past affiliation with the old CIA, he had been compelled to notify the Agency. But that was all he knew.

  “My superiors,” Yuri said, “have been notified by your government that they shot down the missile. It was all a big joke to them. We make promise to cut our missiles with this new one, and they laugh at us. Spit in our face.” He took another hit on his cigarette, his eyes cutting deeply into Jake through the smoke.

  “What do you mean they shot it down. With what?”

  “They say it was laser. Zap! One shot. Star Wars shit.”

  Jake had read about the Airborne Laser program, but he had no idea they had become operational. “But why?”

  Yuri shrugged his shoulders. “Because they could. It’s one thing to test on your missiles, but to shoot down someone else’s missile-” His
voice trailed off as he stamped out his cigarette on the sidewalk.

  Jake imagined the Russian government was hot right now, with that American revelation. Damn. What balls that took.

  “Our world is over, Jake. Passed us by. Shit. Laser beams shooting missiles out of the sky. What’s the use?”

  He had a good point, and maybe that was it. Maybe the Americans had to do it this way.

  “There was no other way,” Jake said. “You tell someone you can shoot down their nuclear missiles, maybe they believe you, maybe they don’t. But you shoot down the most sophisticated missile in their arsenal, and they gotta believe you can do it again and again. The race is over.”

  “No shit.” Yuri thought for a moment, his eyes seemingly transfixed on something behind Jake, and then returning directly to peer at the brown in the American’s eyes. “I need to go. Your friends in the Air Force just made me a dinosaur.”

  “What will you do, Yuri?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Siberia. Go fishing. You come back, Jake. I have a dacha on a lake near here. We go fishing together.” The Russian finally smiled. “Thank you for coming here.”

  Jake helped him into a cab and patted the top as the car drove off. As he walked down the cobblestone in the cold darkness, he couldn’t help but think of the missile test earlier in the day. A laser. Man, the world was changing, he thought. Would it make the thousands of ICBMs in both the Russian and U.S. arsenals obsolete? More than likely. It was too much for him to think about with all the alcohol.

  ●

  The dark Volkswagen sedan pulled away from the curb, its lights off, as it crept along the road a block and a half behind the man on the sidewalk.

  In three blocks, the man stumbled up into the lobby of the Shevchenko Hotel, and the car pulled over to the side of the road.

  Inside the car, the bald driver tapped his chopsticks lightly against the steering wheel. The Asian woman, her eyes having a hard time staying awake, tried her best to block out the tap tap tapping. If she could find a way out of this, away from this crazy man, she would. But was she really that different from him? Probably not. Not as annoying, she knew that much. Just finish the task at hand, she thought, and then back to America.

  3

  There was no way for Jake to tell how long he had been sleeping before it happened. In the darkness of the hotel room, the shades pulled tight against the city lights, his first recollection of anything out of the ordinary came in the form of a slight sound. A clicking noise. But strange hotels always had strange noises, so he closed his eyes again and tried his best to stop the pain in the back of his skull from the vodka.

  Next came a struggle, and his spinning mind reeled about as he lashed against the arms and legs that enveloped him. What was that smell? He knew then that he was in trouble.

  ●

  When he woke again, Jake was cold and shivering in only his underwear and a T-shirt, and obviously in a cramped space. His eyes tried to adjust to the darkness. No way, Jake knew. The odor was unmistakable. Rubber, dirt, oily rags. A car trunk. A car with bad shocks, he thought, as a sudden jerk bounced him up and then back onto the hard surface.

  His arms were strapped to his back and something was stretched around his mouth to his neck.

  He tried to shift and stretch his legs, but they had run a line from his neck to his hands and then on to his ankles, which were also lashed and wrapped back toward his bound wrists. Someone knew what they were doing, Jake thought. He had done the same to others in the past, and there was no escaping from that kind of binding.

  The car turned, rolling him toward his back. A right turn. Then the shocks really started working overtime. A dirt road? A frozen road.

  This was no good. What in the hell was going on?

  Music and singing. Muffled. Coming from the front. Then the voice was louder. Screaming.

  “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” the accented voice screeched above the car’s engine and the bouncing shocks.

  The Beatles? Great. A sadistic Beatles fan.

  Suddenly, the car came to a stop. Jake could hear two doors open and the mumbling. What language? Impossible to tell.

  When the trunk opened, Jake expected to see light, but all he saw was a dark sky with the occasional star poking out from the swirling clouds.

  Both of the dark figures that pulled him out of the trunk wore black ski masks and dark clothing. He noticed they weren’t that large, as they struggled to drag him across the snow and set him against the base of a large pine. Jake tried to see the make of car, but it was impossible in that lighting.

  “You tell me about missile launch today.”

  The language was broken and somewhat effeminate.

  “You’ve got me mixed up with someone who gives a shit,” Jake said, shifting his body up against the sharp edges of the tree bark. He worked his fingers around the knot in the binding. It wasn’t rope. What was it?

  The one who had spoken swiftly struck his right foot into Jake’s chest, nearly taking his breath away and knocking Jake against the tree.

  As Jake recovered, he said, “What the hell was that for?”

  “We have all night, Mister Adams. You don’t.”

  Damn, they knew who he was.

  “The missile launch. Tell me now.”

  “Tell you what?” Jake said, shifting his body up again and trying to shove the material wrapped around his wrists against the sharp bark.

  “Tell me about missile.”

  The clouds spread out and Jake could finally see more stars and more of his two captors.

  “What about it? You want a lesson in physics?”

  The foot came again. This time from the other person. The boot made contact with his right shoulder, knocking him back against the tree again. An unexpected benefit was that the shot loosened the binding between his feet and hands. He rolled over and started sliding his hands up and down against the bark, trying to cut the line from his hands to his feet.

  “We could use lesson in anatomy,” the man said, as he pulled out a butterfly knife and flipped it open.

  “Hey,” Jake said. “Put away the cutlery. What exactly do you want to know about the missile?”

  The man kept the knife pointed at Jake. “What happened to missile?”

  “Listen. I was just a civilian observer.”

  Both of them laughed, and Jake finally heard that the second one was more than likely a woman. With the dark bulky clothes, he had not noticed.

  “Jake Adams. Air Force Intelligence. CIA. Opened security service in Portland, Oregon. Now operate out of Innsbruck, Austria. Major operations in Italy and Germany. Killed Hungarian agents. Stopped Kurdish plot. Helped Austrian company with new heart disease cure. Want me to tell more?”

  “Yeah, you forgot to tell me the last time I got laid.”

  “Toni Contardo. Six months ago. Just before she was called back into service with the Agency.” The man burst into a hearty guffaw.

  Son of a bitch. They had done their homework. He had thought only the Agency knew about his relationship with Toni. He worked harder on his binding now, struggling cautiously.

  “So, who the hell are you?” Jake asked them, stalling.

  “Tell us about missile and we might let you freeze to death. Otherwise.” He waved the knife in the air.

  Why should he hold back anything? Jake thought about what Yuri had told him only hours ago. Would it matter if he told these people?

  “The missile failed,” Jake said. He could have made up any bullshit story. One was as good as the next. “It started to go haywire and the Russians thought it might head toward Kamchatka. They were forced to destroy it.”

  Two things happened almost simultaneously. The man swished his knife toward Jake and Jake flipped around to his right. The knife slit the binding on his back, freeing his feet, and, unexpectedly, the tie that ran up to his neck. Jake rolled over again and again in the snow as if in pain. Then he sent his right foot into the knee of the approaching man. He heard a crack
and the man collapsed in pain, dropping the knife in the snow.

  By now, Jake had gotten to his knees. The woman was on him in a hurry, though. Her right foot caught him in the sternum and sent him flying to his back. As she got closer, he caught her legs with a sweep of his leg and sent her to her back. Then he scurried toward her, grabbed the mask covering her head, and, with one smooth motion, pulled it from her head, her long, black hair flopping out in a ponytail.

  Damn. A Chinese woman. Gorgeous but shocked. He chopped her in the throat and she rolled over, out of breath.

  He had to move now. Jumping to his feet, Jake ran into the forest. His bare feet were freezing, yet he knew he couldn’t stop. And those feet would occasionally stumble onto unseen branches under the two feet of snow. He continued on, branches whipping his face as he leapt over deadfalls. Expecting to hear gunshots, he slowed to a jog and then stopped behind a large pine tree, his breath nearly out of control.

  He listened now. Nothing.

  Then he saw it. A single light shone from where he had just come. The two of them had hesitated long enough to go back to the car for a flashlight, and now they were simply following his tracks. Who knew what else they had gotten at the car. Guns?

  Standing idle, the cold caught up to him in a hurry, and he shook uncontrollably now. Move Jake. Move. He glanced about the forest. There was only one thing he could do. Back track to the road.

  He ran off again, his arms trying to protect his face from branches. How far had he run? The road had to be soon, he thought, his feet and legs lifting high out of the snow with each step, trying his best to keep from gouging the souls of his bare feet again.

  Shortly he saw an opening ahead, the swirling clouds offering a slight view of a meadow or field.

  Coming to the edge of the opening, he hesitated among some smaller pines. If he entered, he knew he would be one big target, picked off like that airborne laser had dropped the Russian missile. Instead, he worked his way around the outside of the field.