Lethal Circuit (Michael Chase 1)

by Guignard, Lars

  43

  ONE WEEKEND MICHAEL’S dad had a surprise for him. They were going on a trip. Just the two of them. Vegas baby. That was when his dad taught him how to gamble. True he wasn’t old enough to legally sit on the casino floor, but gambling Chase style had nothing to do with the tables. It was about people. They sat in the hotel lobby in front of the elevator banks wagering on the guests as they headed into the casino.

  “Ten bucks the woman in green is from Idaho. She’s forty-two, has four kids, a husband who sells auto parts, and she’s here on a girls-only trip.”

  “Forty-five, one kid, recently divorced.”

  Then to settle the bet they’d strike up a conversation and ask. Nine times out of ten Michael’s dad was right. Even about the number of kids. But Michael got better and pretty soon he had picked up the knack. Not as well as his dad. But pretty well. Michael met a lot of people on that trip. And he learned two things. One, you could learn a lot about people just by looking. And two, he should never, ever, bet against his father.

  THE CAVERN WAS illuminated by a row of battery powered lanterns, their white light hitting the underbelly of the Horten where it sat above the cave floor. Michael knelt before the old airplane, up to his thighs in the cold cave water, Kate and Ted at his side. They were held prisoner by Huang’s men, an MP5 to the back of each of their heads.

  “Excellent work,” Huang said to no one in particular. “My countrymen have been searching for this aircraft for sixteen years. You found it in two days.”

  Huang paced behind them, Kate’s newly surrendered Glock in hand. Michael took the moment to cop a glance at the side of the cave, but was swiftly rebuked by a sharp tap of the MP5’s barrel. He had seen what he wanted though. There were five top ropes strung down from the mouth of the cave above. It explained Huang’s sudden appearance. He had been following closely behind them, just as he was now.

  “My men tell me the transceiver is in place, but it is missing parts. Vital parts.”

  “Really?” Michael said.

  “I have yet to search your person,” Huang said. “I give you the choice of retaining your dignity.”

  “That ship sailed back when you got me on my knees,” Michael said, raising his arms. “Go ahead. Search.”

  Michael felt a nudge to the back of his head from the barrel of the MP5. Huang’s men had done a preliminary pat down for weapons upon their capture, but not much else. Michael hoped his invitation to a search was enough to keep Huang at bay.

  “Hands to your side,” Huang said. “I do not believe you realize the severity of your circumstances. You are under my command and have been for some time.”

  “Am I?”

  “Perhaps a demonstration is in order. Reach into your pocket.”

  Michael glanced down at his cargo shorts, his hems wet in the cave water. The worn cotton pockets sagged to the point that you could almost make out the bulge of the rotors he kept hidden in his pocket.

  “Reach into your lower left pocket and withdraw a coin.”

  Michael carefully reached past the rotors, removing a Chinese coin.

  “Recognize it?”

  “Yeah. It’s one yuan.”

  “Throw it in the water.”

  “You want me to make a wish?”

  “I want you,” Huang said, “to throw the coin in the water.”

  Curious as to what Huang was up to, Michael tossed the coin. It landed in the water with a small splash, sinking the twelve or so inches down to the cave floor. Huang walked in front of them and a hit a key on his phone. There was a tiny pop, followed by several large bubbles migrating to the surface.

  “Sarin gas. I’ve neutralized it with an alkali, but the seven other charges you carry within your front pocket are active. You have been a walking chemical bomb since my men approached you on the bridge, Mr. Chase. In addition to emitting a trackable beacon, each of the coins my agents placed upon you contains a lethal dose of nerve poison. Upon release of the gas you will experience nausea and difficulty breathing followed quickly by a complete and total loss of bodily function. Within three minutes you will suffocate to death in your own shit.”

  Michael considered the possibility. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was the fact that weakness would pay no dividend with this man. “Better than listening to yours,” he said.

  Huang snickered, revealing a decayed tooth. “Open your mouth.”

  Michael just looked at him.

  “I said open your mouth.”

  Michael immediately felt a crack to the back of his skull, presumably from the butt of the MP5. He opened his mouth.

  “Stick out your tongue”

  Michael didn’t like it, but when Huang racked the slide on Kate’s Glock, shoving the barrel between his teeth, he saw little choice but to comply. He stuck out his tongue.

  “Good.” Huang withdrew a sarin chemical coin from his pocket and placed it on Michael’s tongue. “Swallow.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Michael spit out the coin.

  Huang’s rebuke was as swift as it was brutal. He pulled back the gun and smashed Michael in the face with a left hook, his fist glancing off Michael’s jaw like a wet hammer. Michael felt a rivulet of blood running down his cheek, but found he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to give this prick the satisfaction of seeing him wince. Not if he could help it.

  “You are a spy, Mr. Chase. You are a spy like your father before you and you will suffer the fate of all spies. You will die.”

  “Yeah, I’m a spy. I’m a slacker Seattle spy come to kick your sorry ass.”

  “Michael,” Kate said, “stop it. It’s not helping.”

  “The man has a right to know who I am.”

  “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “Then I’ll die with a clean conscience.”

  Huang was done punching. He pulled back the integrated trigger lock on Kate’s Glock, extending the barrel of the pistol to Michael’s head. The cave was silent for half a second, maybe more.

  “Enough!” Ted said. “Michael, just give him the damn rotors.”

  Michael caught Kate’s glance. She kept a near-poker face, but he thought he saw the hint of a crack in the façade.

  “The sooner he gets them, the sooner we can all go home.”

  Huang seemed to have recovered his composure. “Please listen to your friend, Mr. Chase. I think you’ll find you’ll live longer if you do.”

  Michael weighed the odds. He didn’t have much choice. Not the way this was going. Plus, he trusted Ted. He trusted him with his life. If this was how it was going to play out, this was how it was going to play out. He made his decision. MP5 still firmly planted at the base of his skull, Michael carefully reached into the front pocket of his cargo shorts and removed the handful of titanium rotors, holding them before him, palm outstretched. For a moment Huang looked like he was about to burst, unable to contain his pleasure. Then, Ted rose from his tired knees, disregarding both the machine guns and Michael’s eyes as he collected the rotors directly from Michael’s hand.

  Huang said, “You did well for an American.”

  “Don’t push it,” Ted said.

  Michael was entirely silent.

  “Ted?” Kate said.

  “Sorry, Kate. Had to be done.” Ted dropped the rotors into a small nylon stuff sack before addressing his attention back to Huang. “I’ve got it from here.”

  “Very good. Be sure to thank Mr. Chase before you shoot him.”

  Without a second glance Huang marched off to the hanging belay ropes and harnessed into the compact automatic ascender dangling there. Michael heard an electric hum and the ascender began to move upward, pulling Huang with it like a worm on a hook. Kate couldn’t contain herself. She glared at Ted.

  “I knew you were all wrong.”

  “After I left the Agency I had some time on my hands.”

  “So what’s the MSS paying these days? Better than the CIA I hope.”

  “Just zip up
and stare straight ahead.”

  “Oh come on. You want me to make this easy for you?”

  Ted nodded to Huang’s men who stepped forward and circled around so that they were facing the kneeling prisoners. Even in the cold cave Michael saw the sweat on Kate’s brow. Then Ted glanced at his watch. Michael’s mind raced. This was it. This was the moment. He glanced at Kate. Then he saw nothing at all but an intense blast of white light. It was followed, what seemed like an eternity later, by incredible percussive force, slapping him to the rock below, din and flame tearing through the cave like an angry act of God.

  44

  THE SCREECHING BLADE of the circular saw provided a pretty good indication that Mobi’s fast times in Alvarez’s indestructible alcove were about to come to a screaming halt. The first ASAT missile appeared to have detonated somewhere near the Chinese satellite, but as Mobi predicted, it had not resulted in the total destruction that Rand had desired. The system was too buggy for that. Instead, the Chinese bird had ceased transmitting. The good news was that transmissions had now resumed. Mobi attributed the lapse to the EMP effect of the warhead, but regardless of the cause, the fact that the effect had been temporary had Mobi stoked. He might be on his way out, but he was still in the game.

  Of course, he knew he wouldn’t be in it long. Sparks from the saw were literally dancing off of his keyboard. Add to that the fact that there was obviously a mole within JPL passing secrets to the Chinese and things were definitely not looking up. Mobi took a moment to rest his eyes. It was time to reassess, or at least examine his fundamental assumptions. He had grown uneasy with the fact that Alvarez had put him in contact with Quiann. What was she really doing talking to a known traitor? She had given him no explanation for this. Could she be the one sending the messages to the Chinese? Putting Mobi onto those messages would certainly be an easy way to deflect suspicion from herself. Not to mention that what Alvarez was saying didn’t make sense. Mobi had assumed that what Alvarez had identified as a hidden clear-code would effectively reset the system allowing normal communication between the Chinese satellite and control. But so far he had found nothing even vaguely resembling a clear-code. Was the answer even in the data stream?

  Mobi remembered a magazine article he had once read profiling Quiann. The article was written several years ago in conjunction with one of China’s higher profile space launches. Mobi recalled his impression of the Chinese technology being woefully behind the curve, but what stuck in his mind was something the article had said about Quiann. Something about his alleged earlier involvement in a quasi-cult organization. Mobi thought it had been called the Green Dragon Society. He had dismissed the tidbit as being largely irrelevant at the time, but it occurred to him, what if Quiann did have some kind of weird allegiance to a secret society? That kind of thing could be enough to throw logic right out the proverbial window. What if Quiann deliberately sabotaged the satellite? What if he wanted it to crash down? Over his old alma mater no less? What if crashing the satellite provided the perfect cover for destroying the cold fusion reactor it held? Because Quiann and his cronies wanted to keep the technology secret. Secret from the world. No, Mobi thought, he had been staring at the data too long. Quiann was a man of science. Of course, so was the Unabomber.

  “Stearn!”

  Mobi heard his name called but paid it no heed. The thought was burnt into his head. If Mobi were to proceed on the premise that Quiann didn’t want him to reestablish communication with the satellite, then he might have sent him bad data. Data that was real enough to look legitimate, but corrupt enough so that Mobi could never crack it. What if Quiann’s whole point, and by that measure Alvarez’s, was to get him off the scent? Mobi wasn’t sure what happened next. He felt a sudden lurch in the floor below him as though the whole alcove was going to fall to the bottom of the building, followed quickly by the cold metal of a night stick thrust against his throat. But Mobi didn’t struggle. He didn’t even move. Because he had a hunch. Now, all he had to do was prove it.

  45

  THE PERCUSSIVE IMPACT of the blast brought Michael to the floor atop Kate, chaos unfolding all around them. All he saw after the initial blast of light was blackness and all he heard was a terrible ringing, so piercing that when the second and third detonations hit, he heard nothing at all. Michael coughed because the cave was now filled with billowing clouds of dust, but the strange thing wasn’t the grit in the air or the ringing in his ears, but something else, something like the rush of water.

  Michael had no idea how much time actually elapsed between the final detonation and the wall of water that followed it, but he knew that what felt like hours may well have been less than a second. In that time, Michael could sense the wave that was coming to take him away, he could feel the rush of moist air, and then the wall of river water simply picked him up, propelling him under the Horten and toward the back of the cave. He felt arms and legs flailing about, arms and legs that definitely didn’t belong to him, and at the same time he felt Kate beneath him. Somehow she had been able to grab a hold of him.

  Michael struggled under the rushing tide, desperately hoping that the water would recede, but instead it continued to push them further and higher, until finally they both hit the back wall of the cave. Then miraculously enough, the river water began to recede, dragging them with it, until Michael grasped a slippery rock and held onto to it like he’d never held onto anything before. The current ripped at them, but in the end relinquished its tug, pulling back until they were left wet but alive on a low ledge on the far recess of the cave wall.

  A battery powered lantern must have floated to the surface, because a dim light was now cast through the cave and already Michael could see Huang’s men picking themselves up. There was shouting. Even though Michael couldn’t hear it, he could see it. But that wasn’t all. Something else had come in with the torrent of water — a hail of gunfire. And though Michael couldn’t see who was shooting, he could see Huang's men being cut down, even as they searched the waist deep water for their weapons. One by one they collapsed, only Ted escaping the hail of bullets as he wrenched himself to cover under the Horten.

  Michael shared a glance with Kate. She was as beat up as he was, but the unspoken communication was clear. They would lay low until they knew what they were up against. As Michael broke eye contact with Kate he saw a single bright light entering the cave. It looked like a Cyclops, or train in the night, except its luminosity betrayed an airy quality, almost as if the light itself was floating on air. The light grew in intensity, floating toward them like the great white beacon at the end of the tunnel of death. At that moment, Michael didn’t care what was on the other end of that light. What mattered to him was that it represented a release from the black bowels of the bat cave and for that he would be grateful.

  It didn’t take long, however, for Michael to recognize that they were not the focus of the light’s beam. In fact their very presence seemed incidental to the men who leapt off what was now identifiable as a Zodiac rigid inflatable boat. Michael watched as the men, whose faces were all but obscured by shadow, rounded up Ted with the frightening efficiency of seasoned professionals. Ordering him to raise his hands above his head, they zip cuffed his hands from behind and led him at gun point through the chest deep waters to the waiting boat.

  Michael carefully craned his neck out of the recess in the rock for a better view. Once Ted was aboard, the focus of the men in the water changed. They set their sights on the Horten which, though standing in several additional feet of water, appeared undamaged from the blast. Their first order of business was to call a command into the dark reaches of the cave. Another spotlight glowed bright white and within moments a second Zodiac containing another crew of men purred in. They bumped up against the base of the Horten and the crew began unfolding mounds of black rubber from their boat. There was little light to make out the proceedings and Michael’s left cheek was level with a cold wet rock, but from what he could see, the men were placing the black rub
ber under the fuselage of the Horten, all to the chorus of a muted popping. Michael knew his hearing still wasn’t right and that the popping sound was no doubt the sound of the rubber slapping the water as it was unfolded but before he could confirm it, he felt Kate nudge him.

  Michael mouthed the word, “What?”

  She pointed above, pantomiming a gun. Michael got it. The popping he heard wasn’t the slap of rubber on water but gunfire echoing from the karst above. There was a shooting match going on up there even as the men below proceeded with their task, unrolling the rubber tubes like snakes beneath the Horten. Michael began mouthing another word, but Kate motioned him not to talk. It didn’t matter. It was obvious that the question on both their minds revolved around their next move. The wall of water that had deposited them so high up on the cave’s wall had given them an excellent vantage point, but it also made them sitting ducks. It would require some tricky climbing to get down, and getting down without being noticed would be even more difficult. For now it was best to stay put.

  The bravado that Michael had felt in the face of the Chinese agent’s interrogation had been mostly washed away by the wall of water. Now all he felt was wet. Wet and cold and glad to be alive. He took the moment to empty his pocket of the sarin laced coins, placing his change on the ledge beside him. They were better there than in his pocket. Except as he placed the final two coins on the slippery rock beside him, he caught his wrist on the pile. One of the coins began to roll. He reached out to catch it, but he wasn’t quick enough. The coin bounced down and hit a rock which it again bounced off before hitting the black water below.