“What are you doing here?”
Michael tried to respond, but found his tongue didn’t work very well with his face flattened on top of the steel mold. What he got out was a mumble, barely discernible even to him.
“I said, why are you here?”
“Traveling,” Michael managed to grunt out.
“Whom do you work for?”
“Nobody.”
“Do you think I am a fool?”
Chen signaled his goons and they powered the metal bar down further across Michael’s throat. Michael knew that it would take only a hint more pressure to collapse his trachea; he just hoped that his aggressors knew it too. After all, if they wanted information, killing him wasn’t the way to go. Of course neither was molding his face into a cheery half globe of the Earth, but given the sudden hiss of the hydraulics above, Michael couldn’t dismiss that the latter might be exactly what they had in mind.
“I said nobody, I don’t work for anybody.”
The hydraulic press began its descent toward Michael’s face.
“Why are you here?”
“I was curious.”
Chen filled Michael’s entire field of vision now, his thin nose and coal black eyes boring into him from above.
“Me too,” Chen said. “I am curious.”
As the hydraulic press lowered, Michael’s cheek suddenly stung as a drop of molten plastic hit it from above. It was now readily apparent that regardless of whether Michael could move or not, he’d have to do something if he wanted out of there alive. It didn’t matter that they’d break his neck if he moved; they’d mash his head with a hydraulic press if he didn’t.
“I came here,” Michael said, “to find my father.”
“Your father?” Chen said, leaning closer.
“What about him?”
“You tell me, American.”
And Michael stole his moment. Kicking out with his outer leg despite the pressure on his throat, he arced his right leg around in a solid rotation, knowing that if he didn’t drop Chen he was done for. He felt the top of his foot connect with Chen’s calf and was able to follow through, sweeping him to the concrete below. Michael heard a scream and he knew the sweep had achieved what he’d hoped. Most people don’t know how to fall. The natural inclination is put your hand out to break the fall, but the inclination is wrong. If you take the full force of your body weight on your hand instead of rolling and spreading the force across your entire body, you’re more than likely to break your wrist, which given Chen’s scream, Michael assumed had happened. But it wasn’t over yet. He’d need to get Chen firmly under control if he was going to have any leverage with the two thugs holding him down. Fortunately, Chen fell right into the sweet spot. And even though the thugs were now hammering down on the bar hard, Michael was able to pin Chen’s neck between his foot and the floor in an improvised hold.
“Let me go or I’ll snap his neck.”
The hydraulic press continued its slow descent, Michael increasing the pressure on Chen’s neck.
“Do it. Now.”
One of the goons hit the stop button on the press and the hydraulic piston came to a standstill, the mold an inch above Michael’s ear. But the bar was still there, holding him in place. Michael leaned down harder on Chen’s throat, Chen finally letting out a wheezing gasp.
“Off.”
The two goons warily removed the bar allowing Michael to pull his head off the molding machine.
“Now, move over there,” Michael commanded.
The goons backed away.
“Not so fast.”
Michael wasn’t sure where the voice had come from, but he knew it wasn’t Chen’s. It didn’t come from the blue-suited goons either, whose arms were now extended out at either side as if to demonstrate that they were unarmed. No, the voice belonged to someone else entirely. Kate.
“Let him go, Michael.”
Kate’s words were steady, her semi-automatic pistol squarely covering the five of them. Chen moaned and Michael increased the pressure on his throat reflexively.
“The bastard tried to kill me.”
“I said let him go.”
Eyeing Kate’s weapon warily, Michael eased up on his foot, relieving the pressure on Chen’s windpipe. All was quiet for a long moment, Kate breathing coolly, expertly controlling the situation. Then, she aimed the pistol squarely between Michael’s eyes and twisted the corners of her mouth up into an ironic smile.
“It’s time you and I had a talk,” she said.
9
KATE HELD THE gun to the small of Michael’s back, just below the Cordura bottom of his climbing pack. She had held it there while she locked Chen and his men on the factory floor and she held it there for the long silent cab ride back to the city. Being held at gunpoint wasn’t a feeling you got used to, Michael thought, but he didn’t feel as hopeless as he had as a seventeen-year-old boy back in Peru. Michael felt somehow more in control of the situation. Stronger. He reasoned that if Kate intended to shoot him, she would have done it had already. No, she was after something more.
The cab pulled off the street and Kate led him into a busy back alley. The narrow corridor was lined twelve feet high with bamboo cages housing live animals of all descriptions. There were turtles and monkeys and pigs and snakes and it smelled, Michael thought, like a low rent pet store, except these animals were more likely to end up on a plate than as somebody’s beloved companion. Kate prodded Michael forward past the woman slicing a bulbous strong smelling yellow fruit on a cart, past the man gutting a meaty corpse, and past the entrails strewn across the stained concrete. Air conditioners moaned, dripping their condensation from the high windows above, laundry fluttering on bowed lines. Kate gave no indication of where they were going or when they would get there. She didn’t speak at all. She merely prodded Michael ever further up the narrow alley until it dead ended at a weathered wooden gate.
Behind the gate was a temple. Not a monument to capitalism like the theme parks and skyscrapers Michael had encountered so far. But a genuine Buddhist temple, its traditional wooden frame and graceful curving tiled roof a reminder of life in a simpler time. Entering its high wooden door, incense hung thick in the dark air, smoky gold leaf covering the walls. The temple looked very old, but in this city there was no way to be sure. It didn’t matter though, because something about Kate’s stride told Michael they weren’t there for the architecture. She led him past a wall of deities where the faithful wafted their sticks of burning scent into a narrow hallway. Kate bowed her head to a young man with a shaved head and they entered a door on the left.
Once inside the room, Kate didn’t stop. She continued to the rear wall where a table and a set of chairs sat. There was a microwave here and a teapot as well. The room obviously served as an informal cafeteria for the temple staff. On the wall was a glossy poster of frigid Northern land, snow glistening on pine branches. Beside it was a large white refrigerator. Pistol still firmly planted in Michael’s spine, she rolled the refrigerator forward with her right hand revealing a litter of dust bunnies congregated around the base of a narrow wooden door not more than four feet high.
“Get in,” Kate said.
They were the first words she’d spoken for over an hour. Michael would have preferred she’d said something else and he definitely would have preferred that she’d taken the pistol out of his back, but regardless, he still didn’t think she was going to use it. No, Michael believed her when she’d said they needed to talk. He just wasn’t certain he wanted to bet his life on it.
“You sure you wouldn’t rather go out for beer?”
Kate opened the narrow door. “I’m sure.”
Her answer didn’t really matter, because the next thing Michael knew he felt Kate’s foot planted on his ass and he was tumbling forward down a steep set of stairs. He was able to roll through most of it and luckily the floor at the bottom was packed dirt, not concrete, but he was beginning to question his assessment of Kate. Maybe she was going to
use the gun. Maybe she was just looking for the right place to do it.
“Get up.”
Kate aimed the gun squarely down at him as she descended the stairs. Some light bled in down here, enough to let Michael know that he was in a rock-walled chamber maybe twelve feet long and half as wide. The mortar was cracking around the larger rocks, moisture seeping in and making the hard dirt floor wet. Kate flipped on a bare bulb and Michael saw that the walls were no more than head high. The chamber had been cut into the earth and around it on all sides was the raised foundation of the temple. An old apothecary chest, covered in heavy dust, sat at the far end of the tiny subterranean room, a black folding metal chair open in front of it. Other than that there was nothing. Just rock and dirt. Michael pulled off his pack.
“Sit,” Kate said.
Pistol trained between his eyes, Michael sat on the cold metal chair, feeling its legs sink into the soil.
“Who are you?”
“Chase. Michael Chase.”
She cocked the gun, pulling back the integrated safety trigger. Michael noted that it was a Glock. Probably a twenty-six. Definitely a problem.
“I said who are you?”
“And I told you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Like I told you the first time, I’ve come to find my father.”
“Who’s your father?”
“Alex Chase.”
“How do you know Alex Chase?”
“He’s my dad.”
Kate looked unconvinced.
“Don’t believe me? Look at me.” Michael reached for the pocket of his cargo pants. “Look at this.”
Kate pointed her gun. “Careful.”
Michael raised one hand and slowly reached into his pocket withdrawing his wallet. He opened it up, revealing a photo of himself and his dad. It had obviously been taken several years previously. The two of them were in shorts and t-shirts, grease everywhere, arms around each other’s shoulders in front of a partially disassembled Volkswagen dune buggy. They called the dune buggy the Yellow Bomber and there was no denying that they were happy, just as there was no denying the family resemblance. It was in the blue eyes, the nose, and the chin, even the way they held themselves. Michael was his father’s son all over.
“Fine. Let’s say you’re his son. Do you know who your father was?”
“Dad? The guy who changed my diapers? The guy who brought me to the ball game? What do you want me to say?”
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Look. You helped me out last night and for that I’m grateful. But the way I see it, this isn’t about me, or my dad, it’s about you.”
“Wrong. Open the chest.”
“Why?”
“Four in, third drawer down. Open it.”
Michael looked at the apothecary chest. It was so covered in foundation dust, it didn’t look like anybody had opened anything for a very long time. Michael counted four drawers in and three down. He pulled the wooden drawer open. It was empty.
“There’s a catch inside the drawer on the top panel. Pull it.”
Michael felt inside the drawer. The wood was rougher in here, unpainted, but his fingers hit something that felt like a metal spring. He pulled it and heard a click.
“Now reach around the back of the chest.”
Michael did as he was instructed. He felt it immediately. A metal box had popped out of the back panel. Placing a hand on either side of the box, Michael was able to remove it, bringing it into the light. The box was dented black metal. About three inches in depth and a little longer than it was wide, it was about the size of a standard Fed Ex parcel.
“Open it.”
The lid was hinged. Michael struggled to undo the hasp, but it was sticky. He had to apply some force, and then, unexpectedly, the hinged side of the lid came open, depositing the box’s contents onto the ground. The first thing Michael saw was a number of passports: Swiss, Canadian, German, British, and at least three others, though Michael couldn’t make out the nationalities from where he stood. There was also currency, a lot of it: bank wrapped packets of euros, pounds, renminbi, dollars. There were what looked like some cosmetic products, some hair dye, contact lenses. And there was a gun. A Browning semi-automatic by the looks of it, its muzzle dug into the dirt.
Kate kicked the Browning aside, hunching down to collect the passports. She opened the British one up first, displaying a photo of Michael’s father. He had black hair and a goatee in the shot, but there was no disputing it was him. She read the name under the photo. “Randal Harris.”
She tossed the passport to Michael, and opened up the next one. It was Swiss. Here Michael’s dad had a shaven head and appeared to be wearing green colored contacts. She read the name under the photo. “Jacob Stringer.” She tossed Michael the Swiss passport and opened the German one. This time Michael’s dad wore a blonde crew cut with a bushy mustache. “Helmuth Heimler.” She tossed the final passport to Michael without opening it.
“You want to play?”
Michael stared down at the passports he now held in hand. There was no denying that the documents were disconcerting, but he wasn’t going to let Kate have the upper hand. Not if he could help it.
“Your father wasn’t the man you thought he was, Michael.”
“There are explanations for this.”
“Name one.”
“He traveled.”
“With a gun?”
“Why not?”
“Unlikely your average foreign shoe salesman would risk bringing a firearm to China.”
“So he picked it up here. For self-defense.”
“This isn’t Texas.”
“No shit.”
Kate shook her head. “Let me guess. He needed a few fake passports too, right? For self-defense.” Kate turned her glance down to the hard packed floor. “Remember your kidnapping back in Peru? Remember the men who did it?”
Michael stiffened. “How do you know about that?”
“Didn’t you find it strange that you were a target?”
“It was opportunistic. They followed us there. For money.”
“You don’t think it had anything to do with who he was?”
Michael felt his blood run cold. “What do you want, lady? Answers? What about you? Who are you? Why do you care about my father?”
Kate lowered her gun, tucking the weapon behind her back. “Your father worked for the CIA. He was an intelligence operative. A spy.”
Michael just laughed. “And how would you know that?”
“Because I was his partner,” she said.
10
PASADENA, CA
MOBI STEARN LOVED chicken. He loved fried chicken, he loved teriyaki chicken, he loved chicken kabob, but most of all he loved Zankou chicken. Zankou was the name of a river in Lebanon, somebody’s dog, and most importantly, six or seven fast food restaurants dishing out the tastiest, tangiest Lebanese style rotisserie chicken in all of Los Angeles County. The chicken was served with Lebanese pickles, tomatoes, hummus, and a tasty garlic paste, all of which Mobi was trying his best to wrap inside an undersized pita when the call came in.
Mobi dropped his whole pita upon the shrill chirp of the phone in fear that one of his supervisors had caught him violating the “no lunch in the lab” policy again. Mobi was a communications engineer in Pasadena, California, a mid-sized city about fifteen miles northeast of Los Angeles. And though Pasadena was best known for the Rose Bowl, the Rose Parade, and associated Rose events, it was also home to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the world leader in the robotic exploration of space.
Operated as a civilian space research facility in conjunction with the California Institute of Technology, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL as it was known, was both a cutting edge research facility and Mobi Stearn’s nine to five. Mobi enjoyed the fact that referring to his work as a nine to five was an entirely accurate description providing one heeded the caveat that he actually worked the graveyard shift betwee
n the hours of nine p.m. and five a.m. Mobi’s title was Deputy to the Deputy Director of Operations. He had ground his way through the grueling PhD program at Caltech to win the job, but the reality was that most of his duties were deathly dull. His work on the current mission, as all of JPL’s space flights were labeled, was to monitor unmanned spacecraft Polo’s orbit of Jupiter’s moon Io. At a distance of three hundred seventy-two million miles, radio communications from Polo took about fifty-two minutes to reach Earth, so Mobi was fairly certain that another half second spent wiping the grease from his hands wouldn’t add up to any major damage before he answered the phone.
“Stearn,” Mobi said through a mostly empty mouth.
“Mobi? I need you up here right away.”
Mobi immediately recognized the voice on the other end of the line as belonging to his boss, Deputy Director Allison Alvarez. “Is this about the chicken? Because if it’s about the chicken —“
“It’s not about the chicken. Hurry up.”
The line went dead, which Mobi considered odd for the Deputy Director Alvarez who, while ever busy, was always polite. The other thing Mobi considered odd was the fact that she was at still at work at this late hour. Sure she was known to pull overtime during critical missions, but Alvarez had a family to get back to and as far as he knew JPL’s current missions were running well within operational parameters, all of which led Mobi to believe that something had come up. Something that would relieve him from the boredom he too often felt in his evening vigils. And so, his curiosity piqued, Mobi picked up his square frame, wiped the tahini from his chin, and headed upstairs for what he sensed was about to become a very interesting night.
Lethal Circuit (Michael Chase 1) Page 5
