Wall of Night

by Grant Blackwood

  Cahil and Fong, who Bear had lowered by his collar, were already on the ground and moving through the mist toward the garage. Tanner sprinted to a nearby bush and dropped to his belly. Nothing moved. To the west, he could see a hint of orange on the horizon. He waited until Bear and Fong were inside the garage, then followed.

  From the cabin came the first shout of alarm. Voices called back in Chinese. Rusty though his Mandarin was, Tanner caught a few words: “Gone,” “Intruders,” and “Horses.”

  In the garage, Bear was swinging open the doors. Fong lay in the backseat of the Range Rover. Tanner jumped into the driver’s seat, Cahil into the passenger seat. “I think we’ve worn out our welcome,” Bear said.

  “You’re assuming we were welcome in the first place.”

  Briggs turned the ignition, floored the gas pedal, and the Rover lurched forward.

  From the left, two figures were running toward them, muzzles flashing. Bullets peppered the Rover’s rear quarter panel. Tanner spun the wheel hard, fishtailed, then accelerated, spewing a geyser of mud. The headlights swept over a gap in the trees. Tanner steered for it.

  Bullets thunked into the Rover’s tailgate. The rear window shattered. Fong screamed.

  “Whoa,” Cahil shouted. “Unfriendly!”

  That answered one question for them: Whether Fong knew it or not, the guards were here not only for his protection, but for the Guoanbu’s as well: Rather than risk Fong’s capture, they were to ensure his silence.

  Tanner called, “Bear, I think our passenger has something to say.”

  Cahil reached back and peeled the tape from Fong’s mouth.

  “—shooting at us! Don’t they know I’m in here?”

  “They know,” Tanner said.

  “Then why … oh … I see now.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing personal,” Cahil replied.

  “I can never go back there again, you know.”

  “Not necessarily,” Tanner replied. “Once we get out of this, I’ll explain.”

  “If we get out of this, don’t you mean?”

  “Think positively.”

  The trees closed in around them until branches scraped the Rover’s sides. Mist swirled over the ground. Rain splattered the windshield. Tanner tightened his grip on the wheel. “Any company, Bear?”

  Cahil leaned his head out the window. “Nope, I don’t see any—Whoa!”

  Tanner saw headlights in the rearview mirror. They were a hundred yards back, but rapidly closing the distance. “I see them! I thought you disabled—”

  “I did. Those aren’t truck headlights.”

  Fong said, “They’re four-wheel ATVs.”

  “What?” said Cahil. “From where?”

  “There’s an old hay bin under the barn.”

  “Oops,” Tanner said.

  “The entrance is disguised,” Fong said. “You weren’t meant to find it.”

  “I’ll say this much, your watchers are good.”

  “Let us hope you’re better.”

  Tanner floored the accelerator, opening the gap between them and the pursuers. As long as there were more straight-aways than curves, they might be able to lose the ATVs. He wasn’t confident, however. This high in the mountains, winding roads were more likely.

  “Bear, how’s our—”

  “Already on it,” Cahil called and began checking their weapons. “Seven rounds in the shotgun; Beretta’s got fourteen, SKS’s got a full magazine. What say I try to create a little gridlock?”

  “Good idea. Hang on, there’s a corner coming up.”

  Cahil climbed into the backseat, shoved Fong to the floor, and propped the SKS on the seat.

  Tanner skidded around the corner, punched the accelerator for fifty yards, then braked hard and doused the headlights. Seconds later the lead ATV came around the corner. Cahil opened fire. The ATV swerved right, then left, then plunged into the trees along the road. Tanner floored the gas pedal and took off.

  In seconds the Rover was back up to speed. Branches whipped past the windshield.

  “Dawn’s coming,” Cahil said.

  To the east the sun’s upper rim was rising over the mountains.

  Tanner said, “We should only be about ten miles from the highway. If we can—”

  “Briggs, watch it!” Cahil called.

  Through the fog, the headlights picked out a tree lying across the road. Beyond it stood half a dozen horses and riders. Tanner slammed on the brakes. The Rover slewed broadside. He spun the wheel, straightened out, and the Rover shuddered to a stop.

  “Your men?” Tanner asked Fong.

  “Yes. They must have gone overland. There’s a game trail that parallels the road.”

  “Now what?” Cahil muttered.

  “Now,” Tanner said, jamming the shift lever into reverse, “we take the road less traveled.”

  The Rover lurched backward, the transmission whining as they picked up speed. Behind them, the three remaining ATVs skidded around the corner. “Briggs … ”

  “I see them.”

  Tanner spun the wheel, slammed on the brakes.

  “What do you think, Bear?” Tanner said, pointing through the windshield at a gap in the trees. Mostly overgrown with brush, the trail sloped away from the road and disappeared. “Wide enough?”

  Fong shouted, “No, wait! It—”

  “Pretty steep,” Cahil said. “But, given the alternative … ”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Tanner replied.

  He slammed the Rover into gear, aimed the hood for the gap, and floored the accelerator.

  20

  The Rover leapt over the ditch and slammed onto the trail, shearing off a pair of saplings as it passed. Tanner and Cahil were thrown against their seat belts. In the backseat, Fong tried to sit up, but lost his balance and fell back again.

  “This is not a trail!” he yelled.

  “What?” Cahil shouted.

  “It’s not a trail! It used to be part of a launch.”

  “A what?”

  The Rover hit a rut, veered right, and clipped a tree trunk.

  Fong yelled, “A boat launch!”

  Even before Fong said the words, Tanner saw the trees thinning ahead and caught a glint of sun on water. The Joe River, he thought.

  “Aw, shit,” Cahil moaned.

  “How deep is it, Fong?”

  “I have no idea!”

  Cahil glanced over his shoulder. “Well, at least they’re not following us anymore.”

  “That’s a plus,” Tanner replied. “Hold tight!”

  He turned the wheel, trying to catch the bumper on a passing tree. It wouldn’t budge. He wrenched on it. Nothing. Cahil poked his head out the side window, then pulled back. “We’re stuck in the ruts.”

  Suddenly the trees disappeared, giving way to a short beach.

  “We’re gonna get wet!” Tanner shouted.

  A wave curled over the hood and crashed against the windshield.

  Tanner flicked on the wipers. They drummed and squeaked across the glass.

  Aside from the beach they’d just left, most of the river’s shoreline was surrounded by sheer rock walls and scrub pine.

  Cahil peeked out the window. “Water’s up to the wheel wells.”

  Tanner pressed the accelerator. The wheels slipped, then took hold, grinding gravel.

  “We’re moving!” Cahil called.

  “Good!”

  “No, Briggs, we’re moving!”

  Tanner looked out and saw the opposite shore drifting laterally across the windshield. “Climb in back, Bear, give me some weight!”

  Cahil scrambled over the seat. Fong let out a yelp.

  Tanner pressed on the accelerator. For a moment there was nothing, then came the crunch of gravel as the wheels found purchase. The Rover lurched backward.

  “You’ve got it!” Cahil yelled.

  Come on, come on, come on … Inch by inch
they began backing toward the shore. Tanner looked in the mirror. The beach was sliding out of view. Running out of room …

  He felt the wheels slip, grab again, then he heard them whine as the Rover’s tail end floated free. He floored the accelerator. A rooster tail of water arced behind the Rover. He let up on the pedal. The Rover began wallowing in the current. Water lapped at the doors. Cahil climbed back into the front.

  Tanner asked Fong, “Any idea where this heads?”

  “Which way are we going now?”

  “Roughly east.”

  Fong thought for a moment “I’m not sure how far, but eventually we should end up parallel to Highway Ninety-four.”

  “We’ll sink long before that,” Cahil said, rolling up his window.

  Tanner did the same. The water was three inches below the window frame.

  The gorge was narrowing now, the bottom becoming rockier. The water began to churn. Froth broke over the hood. Slowly at first, and then with growing speed, the Rover began spinning.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” Fong groaned.

  Cahil patted him on the head. “It’s okay—it’s your car.”

  “Can you swim?” Tanner asked him.

  “Badly.”

  With a groan, the Rover’s engine-heavy nose began tipping into the water. The front tires touched bottom, and the tail spun around until they were traveling backward.

  “Time to abandon ship,” Tanner said.

  They climbed into the backseat. Tanner cut away the tape from Fong’s wrists and Cahil helped him into the cargo area. Cahil was climbing through the rear window when he stopped suddenly.

  “What is it, Bear?”

  “Shhh …! Falls! There’re falls ahead!”

  “Oh, God!” Fong murmured.

  Tanner ducked down and looked out the half-submerged windshield. Fifty yards downstream, a cloud of spray billowed above the river. Through the mist he caught glimpses of car-size boulders lining the shore. “Go, Bear, get out!”

  Tanner knew if they were inside the Rover when it went over, they wouldn’t survive: If the undertow didn’t trap them, the current would knock them around the interior like marbles in a tin can.

  “Try for the boulders!” Tanner called. “I’m right behind you!”

  The driver’s window shattered. Water gushed through and engulfed the front seats. The Rover’s tail continued to rise until Briggs was standing on the backseats.

  With one arm wrapped around Fong, Cahil climbed out the back window and stood on the bumper. Tanner followed. Now he could hear the roar of the falls. Mist swirled around them.

  Briggs glanced at Fong; his eyes were bulging. “You okay?”

  “Yes!”

  Tanner felt a twinge of admiration for the man. He was old, frail, and terrified, but was doing his best to hold himself together. “Ready, Bear?”

  With Fong between them, they slipped into the water. They kicked off the Rover’s bumper and started swimming for the nearest boulder. Immediately Tanner felt the current grip him. White water and froth boiled around them.

  Don’t look, just swim, he ordered himself.

  Legs thrashing, they paddled toward the shore.

  Twenty feet … not gonna make it. For every foot they gained laterally, they were losing three to the current. On impulse, Tanner glanced left just in time to see the Rover tumble over the falls.

  As they drew closer to the shore, Briggs suddenly realized all the boulders were as slick as glass. Sitting at the water’s edge for thousands of years, they’d been polished smooth.

  “We got a problem!” Cahil called.

  “I see it. Keep swimming!”

  Cahil grabbed at a boulder, but his fingers simply trailed over the surface.

  Tanner felt something solid beneath his feet. Rock! He tried to stand up, slipped, then tried again. Cahil continued to slip downstream. Tanner tightened his grip on Fong’s collar. Fong’s head slipped beneath the surface. Cahil pulled him up.

  “I’m going over, Briggs!”

  “Hold on!”

  Tanner tried to stand again, but the current was too strong. He felt himself being dragged under. He grabbed at the rocks. Not going to make it, he thought. He looked at Bear and saw the same realization in his eyes. Tanner reached toward him and they locked hands, sandwiching Fong between them.

  “Take a deep breath!”

  Tanner felt himself pushed up and out. For a moment he floated. The roar of the falls seemed to fade. And then the world tipped upside down.

  Tanner’s vision became a blur of white water and boulders. Everything went black. He felt the icy water envelop him, squeezing his chest like a vice. He opened his eyes. He could feel the pound of the water above him.

  Fong’s face materialized out of the murk. Tanner grabbed him, held on, then groped for Cahil. He felt a hand close over his own, and a moment later they struck bottom. Tanner heard a pop-crunch. Fong’s mouth opened in a silent scream.

  With Fong pressed between them, Tanner and Cahil kicked for surface and broke into the air.

  Five minutes later and fifty yards downstream, they crawled ashore and collapsed.

  “Fong, are you alright?” Tanner called.

  “My foot. Ahhhh. God, it hurts!”

  He crawled over. Fong’s foot was wrenched almost completely backward. The toe of his shoe pointed into the sand. Briggs patted him on the chest. “You’re going to be okay.”

  “It could be worse,” Cahil said with a smile.

  Tanner grinned back; the joke was an old one between them “Could be dead.”

  An hour later they had a makeshift camp set up and Fong was resting with Tanner’s cold, water-soaked anorak wrapped around his foot. He and Cahil had faired better. Aside from some scrapes and bruises, they were unscathed.

  Cahil left to scout their location and returned forty minutes later. “Highway Ninety-four’s about two miles to the east; from there it’s about five miles to the Homer Tunnel.”

  “Now what?” asked Fong.

  “Now we make a deal,” Tanner replied.

  “What kind of deal?”

  Tanner couldn’t risk telling Fong the real reason they’d come lest they be forced to smuggle him out of the country and keep him incommunicado, in which case Fong could never come back here without facing a lengthy, and perhaps fatal, Guoanbu debriefing. If Tanner could get what he needed without destroying Fong’s life, all the better. Of course, that depended on how well he told his story.

  During Ledger, Briggs began, he met and fell in love with a young Chinese woman, a poet named Siylin. Soon after the failure of Ledger, Tanner learned the government had labeled her poetry “ideologically impure.” She was sent to a reeducation camp. A few months ago, she’d been released.

  “I want to get her out,” he concluded.

  “This has nothing to do with Soong?”

  Tanner shook his head. “I doubt he or his family survived a year in the laogi.”

  “Then why are you here? I don’t understand.”

  “I want the names of a few … untrustworthy Guoanbu informants I can use.”

  “Why?”

  “Getting in and finding Siylin is going to be the easy part Getting out could be tricky. If I run into trouble with the Guoanbu, I want to have some misdirection up my sleeve.”

  Fong frowned. “I see. And if I refuse?”

  “Then you’ll have to come with us.”

  “Which means I can never come back here.”

  Tanner nodded. “Our way, you get to stay.”

  “Explain.”

  “You’ll be found along the edge of the highway, having jumped from the moving car of your kidnappers. Scraped and battered, you crawled into the underbrush and hid before the kidnappers had a chance to turn around. Scared off by passing cars, the kidnappers fled.”

  “Kidnappers, eh?” Fong mused.

  “Two hours after we drop you off, the po
lice will receive a tip giving them your location.”

  “How do you know the names I give you won’t be false, or that I won’t contact the Guoanbu?”

  “Two reasons. One, if you burn me, they’ll want to know where you got the information. They’ll doubt your kidnap story, and you’ll find yourself back in Beijing.”

  “And the other reason?”

  “If I don’t get out of China, my friend here will be paying you another visit.”

  Fong glanced at Cahil, who smiled and gave him a short wave.

  “I see,” said Fong.

  Tanner said, “I’m hoping none of that will be necessary.”

  “As do I. If I give you these names, can you promise me they won’t be hurt?”

  “I can promise I won’t knowingly put them in harm’s way. That’s the best I can do.”

  “Why not just take me until you’re done? Easier still, why not get the names, then kill me? I would’ve thought I’d given you reason enough.”

  “Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age,” Tanner replied. “You did what you did in Beijing because it was your duty. Providing you hold up your end of the bargain, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to live in peace.”

  Fong considered this for a moment, then nodded. “You have a deal.”

  21

  Holystone

  Driving straight in from the airport. Tanner and Cahil reached the office in midmorning and were greeted by Dutcher, Oaken and, to their surprise, Charlie Latham. “Welcome home,” Dutcher said.

  “New recruit?” Tanner said, smiling at Latham.

  “Temporarily,” Dutcher replied. “I’ll fill you in later.”

  “Good to see you again, Charlie.”

  “You, too.”

  Dutcher led the group into the conference room. Tanner and Cahil, whose body clocks were still on New Zealand time, gladly accepted coffee.

  “I assume you found Genoa?” asked Oaken.

  “Your directions took us to his front door,” Cahil said. “I have a new respect for sheep.”

  Dutcher said, “Tell us.”

  Tanner recounted their trip, starting with their crossing of Lake Ada and ending with their tumble over the falls. “Alternating piggybacking duties, we hiked overland to the Homer Tunnel, then stashed Fong in the underbrush and flagged down a tour bus to Dunedin. We called the police, boarded a charter to Auckland, then here.”