They’ll tell their story, then everyone will know.
“If anyone should find this recording, and is able to, please let my wife and children know that I love them, and that I did this to save them. And to my parents, I’m sorry. I hope you understand why I did this, and find it in your hearts to forgive me for what I’ve done. And to any American military who might hear this.” He paused as he struggled to control himself, the Mexican border whipping past, the trailing Raptors breaking off. “Avenge me.”
He punched the GPS coordinates into the onboard computer and turned slightly west, toward the coast, and minutes later was over the coordinates he had been given.
And his heart sank.
He had images of some amateur-hour Islamic group with a flatbed truck. Instead what he spotted from the air was an entire convoy of transport vehicles of varying sizes, all disguised with bright advertising, everything from Coca-Cola to Old Spice about to make off with pieces of his aircraft.
Which means they’ll have to hack it apart so at least it will never fly again.
This made him smile as he began a vertical landing on a clearing off the highway ringed with men and equipment, one guiding him down visually. He felt the jolt of a poorly executed landing, his nerves getting the better of him, and before he had finished powering down someone was tapping on his canopy. He finished his checklist as he opened the canopy, the shouts of a couple dozen voices quickly surrounding him as he manned up, pushing his emotions aside. Unbuckling himself, he climbed out of the aircraft and down to the ground.
Immediately he was flanked by two men, led away to the road he had spotted off the clearing. As he looked around him his mind began to reel. A couple of dozen well organized men were swarming the aircraft, tools as advanced and appropriate as any he had seen at the Skunk Works deployed, dismantling his state of the art plane, parts already being loaded into the back of a waiting truck.
But these weren’t terrorists. At least not Middle Eastern terrorists.
What the hell is going on here?
“Hold this.”
A gun was shoved into his hand and before he could think it was removed, the gloved man slipping it into a Ziploc bag and running toward a landing chopper, a civilian job with US registration tag on its tail. It was airborne within seconds, heading north, for what purpose he couldn’t imagine.
“What’s going on here?” he asked.
“Exercise,” replied a man whose bearing suggested senior officer. “Major Miller, I presume.”
“And you are?”
“Need to know, Major.”
Miller’s eyes narrowed. “You’re military. American. Why would you do this? Why would you steal an F-35? Why would you kidnap my family?”
“No idea what you’re talking about Major,” replied the man as the first truck pulled away. Miller looked over his shoulder at the plane and his jaw dropped at how much of the fuselage had already been removed. There was no doubt these men knew exactly what they were doing, and had been trained in their task.
Which meant reassembly and deployment was entirely possible.
The man in charge pointed to a waiting car then walked away, leaving Miller to wonder what the hell was happening. He was marched to the car, placed in the back with Military Police precision, then on his way north. Two men were in the front seats, a divider between them and him preventing any conversation.
He didn’t bother trying.
What is going on?
The car suddenly stopped, the two front seat occupants climbing out. His door was opened, nothing said. It was apparent they wanted him out so he obliged, looking at the driver’s face, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, his face a chiseled specimen right out of any seasoned army platoon.
With no emotion.
A gun was handed to him by the passenger. “It has one bullet. Fire it in the air.”
They’re going to kill me. They’re going to make it look like suicide.
And he couldn’t have that, he couldn’t have his family thinking he had killed himself.
“What’s going on here? You guys aren’t Muslim terrorists. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re Special Ops. American Special Ops. You promised me you’d free my wife and sons. Where are they? I want to see them.”
“Take the gun, fire the one bullet in the air.”
“Not before I talk to my family.”
“Follow my instructions and we’ll let you talk to your family.”
Miller realized he had no options here. He was going to die, of that there was no doubt. But he wasn’t willing to die on their terms, or at least not completely on their terms. He reached forward with his left hand, taking the gun. A momentary debate had him trying to shoot one of them but the driver’s gun was suddenly placed against his left temple from behind.
“Fire the gun, Major.”
Miller sighed, then raised the weapon in the air, squeezing the trigger. The shot startled him slightly, the desert-like expanse he found himself in nearly silent otherwise. A few birds took to the air in protest, and before he had the satisfaction of getting away with his little deception of leaving the powder burns on the wrong hand, he felt the driver’s gun press a little harder against his head, the slight movement as the trigger was squeezed leading him to close his eyes, and pray to God his family would be safe.
Kunlun Mountains, China
Three days later
CIA Special Agent Dylan Kane lay completely still, his breath steady as he stared through his binoculars, the digitally enhanced image giving him the best view any American had yet of the massive Kunlun complex built into the side of a mountain. It was China’s Area 51, unknown to the world except to those with the highest of security clearances in both the Chinese and American spheres, including a few black ops specialists like himself.
He had been observing the top secret facility for two days now, more on a hunch than anything solid. An F-35B Lightning II prototype had been stolen three days ago, the event hushed up so barely anyone in the Pentagon knew about it, let alone the press. The plane had been flown by its pilot across the border to Mexico, then it vanished without a trace, the pilot’s body found on the side of a lonely highway the next day, a single gunshot to the head.
The file had been sent to his tablet as part of the emergency flash traffic, all agents to be on the lookout for any hint as to where the priceless aircraft had been taken. The preliminary file had it a murder-suicide, the pilot’s wife and children, including a ten month old baby, were found shot to death in their home with his personal weapon, his service weapon used to kill himself with after he had stolen the aircraft.
The red flags in the intelligence community were several fold. One, he was right handed, but shot himself with his left. This made no sense, so the thinking was he was trying to send a message that he hadn’t done this willingly. Two, the fact he shot himself, or someone made it look like he had, meant the airplane had been landed safely. And three, the fact they couldn’t find the airplane anywhere near where he was found suggested someone had been waiting to take it.
Extortion.
To Kane it was clear that poor Major Miller had been the victim of extortion. Give us the plane or we kill your family. The question was who had done it? Russians, Chinese, North Koreans? They all had the resources and will to pull off such a heist. Iran, Islamic terrorists? He doubted it. Iran couldn’t risk being caught. They’d be bombed back into the dark ages since there was little they could do to retaliate. Russians, Chinese and North Koreans could risk it because they had enough of a military deterrent to not have to worry about military retaliation, and terrorists could risk it since they had no real country, but their capabilities were limited.
When the flash had arrived, he had been “in the neighborhood” so had popped into Shanghai using his well-established cover as an insurance investigator for Shaw’s of London. He quickly made his way to the Kunlun region where a supply drop was waiting for him including the ghillie suit he now wore, the c
ustom fitted camouflage often used by snipers allowing him to blend in with his terrain.
His hunch was that if the Chinese were involved, they would take the plane here, their most secret of facilities. He was less than a hundred yards from the entrance, the terrain left to seed so as to help conceal the true nature of the installation, it allowing him to blend in easily and slowly advance upon the entrance.
There was little hiding the massive runway nearby that allowed any size aircraft to land with room to spare, however between flights camouflage netting would automatically deploy, disguising it from eyes in the sky. And the two times he had seen the runway used so far, he had noted they were timed to occur when the known eyes in the sky weren’t overhead.
Unfortunately for the Chinese they weren’t aware of all the birds the various intelligence organizations of the United States Government had placed over the planet.
And it also ignored the fact the latest satellites could look at extreme angles across massive distances, straight into that hangar door that Kane noticed was now opening.
Grinding of gears to his right had him turn slowly as a convoy of trucks appeared, at least twenty strong with a large military escort. He was on the edge of the road now, the sun low on the horizon, the mountain containing the Kunlun facility casting a massive shadow over his position, and he was confident this was what he had been waiting for. He stuffed his binoculars in his pocket and fired a piezoelectric transducer at the main doors of the complex, the first half of a transmitter designed to bridge data streams between opposite sides of thick steel. Holstering his weapon, he straightened himself parallel to the road, then waited as the first half dozen vehicles went by. He spotted a large eighteen wheeler.
Pulling a hook from his utility belt, he rolled quickly onto the road and under the truck, reaching up and grabbing on to the undercarriage with the hook. He was suddenly jerked along at nearly twenty miles per hour, his body bouncing on the ground as he pulled another hook from his utility belt and reached up, securing it to a part of the undercarriage near his waist. Pulling back and forth on a ratchet attached to his belt, he was slowly drawn up off the ground and was soon hugging the undercarriage as the sound of everything around him changed.
As the vehicle rolled into the complex, a complex no American had ever seen before, he swung himself 90 degrees and fired the second half of the transmitter at the door, both halves designed to decay within twelve hours, leaving nothing but a stain behind. The piezoelectric transducers would use ultrasound to transmit his data through the steel doors when they were closed, allowing his transmissions to still be received.
He pressed the inside of his watch band three times, activating extremely sensitive audio and video surveillance equipment, everything streaming to his phone then sent on a special carrier wave to transmitting equipment he had set up outside that would beam the data directly to a satellite stationary overhead. Langley would be already receiving his signal, which meant if he didn’t survive, at least they’d know where he died.
The convoy rolled deeper into the complex, slowly now. He lowered himself a couple of feet so he could see out the sides. The walls were rock, the tunnel bored through years before. Along the sides lay piles of neatly stacked supplies, massive amounts of tinned food and water, as if the Chinese were expecting to have to hole up here for a while.
Do they know something we don’t?
All he did know was that he had to get out of this convoy otherwise he’d be stuck in some secure area, hopelessly trapped.
He unhooked the first rope he had used, reeling it back in some, then hooked it as far to the right as he could reach. He unhooked the second line and swung over. The tunnel was dark, the Chinese obviously observing protocol while the convoy entered and the doors were open to prying eyes. Only dimmed headlights, filtered from shining up, lit the area, and fortunately for Kane they were doing a bad job of it.
Kane saw his moment ahead, a gap in the supplies. He reached up and grabbed the release on the hook. Squeezing it, he hit the ground and rolled, years of training and experience having it timed perfectly so he slid into the gap he had spotted. He remained still, listening for any shouts or change in the vehicles’ speed indicating he might have been seen, but heard nothing.
Kane stripped out of the ghillie suit, hidden in the shadows. Rising, still hugging the wall, his back to the newly arriving vehicles, he straightened his People’s Liberation Army uniform he had worn under it, the rank of Lieutenant Colonel entitling him enough respect to at least make anyone junior question him with some hesitation.
He ran his fingers over his fake eyebrows, tape pulling his eyes slightly back to give them a bit of an Asiatic look, his skin already darkly tanned. If someone saw him close-up in the light of day, they’d know he was Caucasian. His job was rarely to actually try and go undercover as an Asian, it was to use his cover as an insurance investigator to gain access to an area then his trade craft to keep out of sight.
But today, an F-35 was worth risking his life for.
He pulled a collapsible briefcase from the backpack on his ghillie suit, transferred his recording and transmission equipment to it, then removed a hat, completing his uniform. Pulling it low over his eyes, he stepped out of the shadows, heading in the same direction as the convoy down a tunnel that seemed to have no end in sight.
He took a chance.
Turning, he waved at the next truck and heard the driver gear down, but before he could stop Kane jumped on the running board of the passenger side, shouting, “Keep going!” in perfect Chinese. He immediately faced away from the window and stood in place, gripping a handhold designed for just what he was doing, standing stiffly, as if he belonged there.
Nothing was said, the insignia on his shoulder enough to scare any soldier lowly enough to be driving a truck into silence.
A klaxon gave a single bleat and lights flickered on, the tunnel no longer the dark mystery, the front gates obviously closed. Kane kept his head turned away from the truck, but his peripheral vision took in everything. The tunnel was as wide as the hangar doors were, wide enough to taxi a full sized military transport aircraft the entire way should it be desired. It was essentially a runway inside the mountain. The supplies he had noticed earlier were now clearly visible, and still lining the sides, the sheer volume staggering. Ahead he saw the tunnel open into a massive chamber, well lit, where he knew he’d be spotted a little too easily.
He jumped off the truck, easily gaining his stride, his hat pulled low, his head slightly down as he continued to walk with purpose toward the chamber, all the while his eyes scanning the entire area, looking for a place to hole up and observe. Personnel in the tunnel seemed to be scant, but he could already see dozens if not more rushing around the chamber ahead.
Stepping between several tall pallets of supplies, he opened his briefcase, resting it on what looked like canned bean sprouts. With purpose he pulled out a file folder, pretending to read it carefully, instead letting the rest of the convoy pass, along with its escort.
Suddenly the tunnel was nearly silent, the only sounds the massive fans overhead and the activity echoing from the chamber ahead. Glancing around to make sure he wasn’t seen, he slowly crouched, bringing the briefcase to the floor. He left his gun in the case, knowing if he needed to use it he was done for, instead opting for two knives and some wire, along with his phone, transmitting still, and several tiny body cameras and microphones.
Again making sure he was alone, he closed the briefcase, placing it against the pallet behind him, then spun the combination to 331. He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He stepped out of the shadows, continuing his purposeful walk toward the chamber. As he strode forward, his devices recording everything within view, he spied another spot for him to use for cover that would give him a view into the chamber with hopefully no one seeing him.
Stepping behind a large pallet of water bottles, he checked for company then dropped to a knee. Removing his glasses from his pocket, he pu
t them on, the lenses as dark as any pair of sunglasses to the unsuspecting. Tapping a pressure sensor on the right arm three times, the integrated LCD displays kicked in, immediately enhancing his view. In the upper left corner he could see a view from behind him, tiny cameras mounted in the temple tips. His transmission status was indicated, along with his vitals such as pulse and other numbers monitored through his special t-shirt.
But he ignored all those. He stroked his finger along the pressure sensor built into the rim and immediately zoomed into the chamber, the video being sent directly to Langley. It was massive, easily the size of a football field inside. The trucks from the convoy were all lined up neatly, parked side by side, hundreds of troops unloading what looked like airplane parts.
F-35 parts.
He did another check to make sure he was alone, then spoke, quietly. “Control, if you’re seeing this, I’ve found your missing bird. It’s been stripped down to parts, no hope of retrieving. Will examine alternatives, out.”
Those alternatives were few. Try to destroy the plane or leave it.
He’d prefer to escape alive, but if he died trying to destroy the plane, he might be okay with that. But he saw little opportunity for that. The parts were being placed in the center of the chamber with hundreds of troops surrounding them.
Something caught his eye.
He zoomed in on a group of men gathered near one of the engines. Using his other finger, he cranked up the volume.
“—your down payment, shall we say.” The man speaking was black—African-American based upon his perfect Yankee English.
“Our government is pleased,” said a General, his head bobbing as he looked around him. “We honestly didn’t think you could do it.”
“When the General makes a promise, it is kept. Of that, you can count on.”
“As can be said of the Chinese government.”
Death to America (A Special Agent Dylan Kane Thriller, Book #4) Page 3
