Depth Charge
Page 1
Depth Charge
Caine: Rapid Fire Book Four
Andrew Warren
Aiden L. Bailey
DEPTH CHARGE
Andrew Warren
Copyright © 2018 by Andrew Warren. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
Cover design by Onur Aksoy
aksoy.onur@icloud.com
Click or visit:
AndrewWarrenbooks.com
Contents
Readers Group
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Thomas Caine returns in…
Tokyo Black - Chapter One
Tokyo Black - Chapter Two
Thank You!
The Thomas Caine Series
Also by Aiden L. Bailey
Readers Group
Acknowledgments
Andrew Warren Bio
Aiden L. Bailey Bio
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Author’s Note
The events of Depth Charge take place before Devil’s Due, when Thomas Caine is still a paramilitary officer in the CIA’s Special Activities Division / Special Operations Group…
Chapter One
MACAU, PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Thomas Caine stepped from the shadows into the light. His emerald eyes were focused and intense. His SIG Sauer P226 handgun was raised and ready.
The spacious office was dim, lit only by the neon glow of adjacent skyscrapers. Blinking shafts of light beamed through the bamboo scaffolding that surrounded the building.
Most of the light came from a massive glowing billboard that adorned a nearby building. The luminous sign displayed the head and bare shoulders of a beautiful woman. Her skin was pale, and a bob of black hair framed her perfect cheekbones. Dark sunglasses masked her eyes. The o-shape of her mouth glistened with desire, and looked ready to reach out and kiss him.
Caine looked away from the gigantic portrait and advanced into the room. The fifteenth floor was devoid of people this late in the evening, as was the plan. But the man he had come to meet was also missing. That wasn't part of the plan.
It was too quiet. Too still. It felt wrong.
Another shaft of neon cut through the dark room. Caine spied a silhouetted figure, slumped over a desk at the far end of the office. Glowing lines of text scrolled across the flat-screen monitor in front of him. As Caine moved closer, he made out latitude and longitude coordinates. IP addresses. Ocean currents and satellite trajectories.
“Min?” whispered Caine, fearing the worst.
His instincts screamed. Turn around, he thought. Walk away. The operation is blown.
But he needed to know if Jasper Min was actually dead or merely incapacitated. Caine stepped closer. “Min?” he said again.
The man wasn’t moving. He wasn’t even breathing.
In the dim light, Caine could just make out a thick black pool, expanding under the corpse’s twisted feet. Another shaft of light angled through the room, revealing the sticky fluid to be crimson red.
Caine stepped around the body. A red gash cut across the corpse's neck. Jasper Min’s throat was slit from ear to ear. Caine touched the man’s face with the back of his hand. The body was warm. A recent death.
“Min won’t be joining us,” called a voice from the shadows.
Caine whipped around and raised his firearm.
Three men in dark suits emerged from the darkness. Each held a QSZ-92 semi-automatic 9mm pistol, aimed straight at Caine’s heart. Weapons favored by the People’s Liberation Army and the People’s Armed Police.
Assassins, Caine knew. Professionals. I didn't hear them sneaking up behind me.
The center man took a step into a shaft of light. The harsh glare revealed his features. His eyes were like two dark pools of murky oil. His head was large and bald, and his skin was as pale as the moon.
“A foreign spy caught red handed,” he said in practiced English. “What should we do with you, Mr. Caine?”
Caine's emerald eyes blazed in the darkness. He glared at the man, but said nothing.
The moon-faced man grinned without humor. “Don't be foolish, Mr. Caine. Things can always get worse.”
"At least we agree on something," Caine said with a shrug.
He slowly raised his weapon in surrender, then moved his finger away from the trigger and dropped it at his feet, keeping it close enough that if any of the three men went for it they’d be in Caine’s striking distance.
And there's still my knife, he thought.
He wore a Strider SMF fighting knife, strapped in a sheath on his right leg. There was no way he was going to let himself end up in a Chinese black prison. The poor souls who entered such bleak, quasi-legal facilities were rarely seen again. They were tortured, abused, humiliated, and eventually executed.
There would be no outcome tonight where he was going to let these men take him, alive or dead. One way or another, he knew he would need his knife soon.
There was no point in denying their charges. He figured these men were intelligence officers of the MSS, China’s Ministry of State Security. The organization was responsible for counter-intelligence, foreign intelligence and political security. The MSS had eyes and ears everywhere in China. If they were on to him now, they had probably tracked his every move for days, if not weeks.
Caine put out his wrists ready to be cuffed. He needed the men to get close. “Are you going to arrest me?” he taunted.
“Arrest you?” said the moon-faced operative. His voice held a condescending tone, and his lips curled into a sneer. “That is a Strider SMF knife you have strapped to your leg, Mr. Caine, is it not?”
Caine resisted the urge to look down. The knife was indeed hidden exactly where the moon-face operative said it was. He had been compromised even worse than he’d thought.
“You are former U.S. Special Forces, yes? Marine Raider Regiment, perhaps? They train their recruits to slit a man’s throat with that very same weapon.”
Caine said nothing.
“Poor Jasper Min. An honest programmer working for the PLA. An innocent man you corrupted with promises of money and a new life in the west. But his usefulness had run out, so you murdered him. We arrived too late to save Mr. Min’s life, but at least the culprit was apprehended."
The operative looked from Caine to Min’s corpse. “No, I have a better idea. We arrived just in time to shoot the culprit… while resisting arrest.”
Adrenaline flooded his nerves. His instincts spurred him into action. Now! he thought. Move!
Caine ripped the flat-screen from Min’s desk. Sparks flew as he threw it hard across the office. The moon-faced man grunted as it slammed into his jaw. Caine heard the snap of breaking bones.
He was running, sprinting for cover, before the man hit the ground.
More fireworks, greens and reds, blues and purple, lit up the velvet night sky. The pyrotechnics disorientated his foes, bathing their scowling faces in a dizzying array of colorful light.
The two standing agents squinted in the sudden bright lights, then opened fire. The bullets missed Caine by inches, whizzing past his head and shattering the glass ahead of him.
He leapt through the broken window without a second thought. As he flew through the shattered glass, he remembered he was fifteen stories above the ground.
The bamboo scaffolding, he thought. Should break my fall...
Unfortunately, he misjudged its width. He flew over the narrow planks, and plummeted into darkness. He was falling, tumbling through the warm night air. One, two, three floors rushed by... He flailed his arms, reaching out for the skeleton of bamboo poles to slow his fall.
On the fourth level his fingers finally gained purchase. His body whipped back towards the building. He hit the bamboo gangway with a thud, landing on his back. The air exploded from his lungs in a pained gasp. His muscles throbbed, and he felt like he had run face-first into a brick wall.
Again, fireworks crackled above him… Primary colors, drowning out the starlight.
Caine stumbled to his feet, felt the bamboo planks wobble beneath him.
Then the gangway collapsed...
He fell three meters onto the next gangway, groaned as further pain seared through his legs and back.
Again he staggered to his feet. Before he could take another step, the first MSS operative swung down, slamming a kick into his chest.
Caine staggered backwards. His eyes watered and his head spun.
The operative came at Caine fast with a barrage of kicks and punches. The strikes were fast and powerful… the practiced maneuvers of a trained martial artist. Caine blocked and parried, barely able to keep the attacks from landing on his face and chest. His arms and legs took a beating as they deflected the force of the blows.
As sparkling yellow and orange fireworks lit up the sky, Caine caught a glimpse of the impassive woman on the billboard. The gigantic black circles of her designer sunglasses gazed over the melee below.
A second kick thudded into Caine’s chest. The pain and the force of the blow sent him reeling backwards. His flailing arms grabbed a loose bamboo pole. He bent the flexible wood backwards as he staggered away from his attacker. He released the pole, just before it snapped.
With a loud twang, the tensed bamboo pole sprang violently back. The operative cried out in pain as it struck him in the face.
Caine seized the moment of distraction, and charged at the man.
They collided and tumbled over the edge of the scaffolding.
Caine reached out and grabbed a dangling rope. As he fell, the line tangled around his leg and flipped him upside down. He jerked to a halt, suspended far above the busy Macau streets.
The operative was not so lucky. His scream faded to an echo as he plummeted to the streets below.
Caine felt air rush past him. The crack of gunshots thundered through the night sky.
As Caine swung in a wide circle, he craned his neck and looked up. The two MSS operatives leaned over the scaffolding. They were shooting at him, without a care for the people in the streets. He heard the screams of pedestrians rise up as they spotted the violent scene unfolding above.
Guess the falling body got their attention, he thought.
Caine swung back and forth, unable to control his motion as the bullets whizzed past.
The second operative’s weapon clicked empty. The man leapt down three levels, landing on his feet like a cat. He quickly reached the rope entangling Caine. He drew a knife and began to slash at the fibers.
Caine swung close to the scaffolding, but not close enough to grab the bamboo poles.
He swung out again.
The rope strained, its strength dissipating as the twines were cut one by one.
Caine reached up and pulled down his pants leg. His fingers wrapped around the pommel of his knife, and he drew it from its sheath. He aimed at the operative and his arm snapped forward, hurling the weapon through the air. The hundreds of hours he’d practiced throwing knives paid off. With a wet thud, the razor sharp blade struck the operative in the neck. The wound gushed blood, painting the wall behind him with a crimson splash. The man didn’t have time to scream as he fell backwards. He was already dead when he hit the gangway.
The rope holding Caine slipped and he fell another few meters. The scaffolding creaked as he swung closer to the building. He reached out, grabbing a bamboo pole just as the rope gave way.
The tension hissed out of the severed rope, and the tangled coil slipped from around his feet. Caine clambered onto the gangway of the next level. He looked up.
The final operative stared down at him. His jaw was bruised, and his mouth still gushed blood from the impact of the monitor. He bellowed a curse in Chinese and swung towards Caine, dropping one level after the other.
Caine spun around, and tugged at a vertical support pole until it came away. Then he kicked at another. The wood splintered as he battered it with more blows. As it snapped in two, he raced along the gangway, and kicked another. Then another.
A series of snaps and creaks filled the air. Without the supporting poles, a half-dozen gangways fell, crashing down towards him. The operative screamed as the scaffolding collapsed around him.
Caine sprinted along the plank, struggling to avoid the falling beams before they crushed him to a pulp.
The gangway underfoot tipped down at a steep angle. Caine lost his footing and began sliding downwards. As the bamboo skeleton continued to crumble, the angle became steeper, until it was almost vertical. He was tumbling, falling until he came crashing down on top of the operative.
Together they crashed through another gangway. They were clawing, punching and kicking at each other. Like the other MSS operatives, the man was skilled in martial arts. He kept coming at Caine with swift, deceptive feints and attacks. His face was a bloody mess and his jaw looked shattered. Shards of bamboo were impaled in his back as a result of his fall. But his injuries didn’t slow him down. All Caine could do was keep his arms up to defend his body. He tried to keep his limbs loose so his attacker didn’t trap him in a lock and snap a bone.
A kick in the thigh sent Caine crashing down.
In desperation Caine reached behind him, searching for a weapon. His flailing fingers wrapped around a snapped bamboo pole.
His attacker launched into another volley of kicks and strikes. His fist swung toward Caine’s throat, aiming to crush his airway.
Caine jabbed the splintered bamboo shaft up like a spear, impaling the operative as he lunged forward.
The man stopped in his tracks, gasping in pain as the jagged tip pierced his heart and lungs. He fell to his knees. His face turned even paler as a stream of crimson blood flowed through the hollow bamboo shaft.
Caine scrambled back just fast enough to avoid getting the man's blood on him. Then the operative tumbled sideways, and fell into the Macau night.
The bamboo structure groaned and shuddered again.
Before Caine could react, the gangway tipped and he was sliding.
He struggled to gain purchase, a foothold, anything to stop him falling to his death.
But he only fell a couple of meters, then landed on his feet.
He had already reached street level.
Chapter Two
Caine's e
merald eyes glanced around the street. Hundreds of pedestrians surged through the crosswalk, moving towards the hotels and casinos. Slim trench coats covered the wide-eyed women's glitzy cocktail dresses. Men wearing dinner jackets and expensive suits stared at him in shock and disbelief. Caine knew it was only a matter of time before one of these people took his photo, compromising his covert status. But so far, the crowd near him seemed too surprised to even reach for their phones.
He stepped forward as the remaining bamboo scaffolding collapsed into a heap behind him. People screamed and backed away from the wreckage. A cloud of dust filled the air as he walked away.
Caine wasted no time blending with the crowd. As a gweilo, a ghost man with a Caucasian complexion and bright green eyes, he stood out. He needed to put some distance between himself and the crime scene. He heard sirens wailing in the distance, drowning out the explosive fireworks. Too many people had seen him. His description would soon be broadcast on all the police channels.
Whichever way Caine turned he felt watched. He glanced up at the mysterious model on the towering billboard. The dark pools of her sunglasses and her sleek naked shoulders loomed over him, fifty meters from neck to scalp. Her giant pouting lips looked ready to kiss him. He had an uncanny notion she was watching over him.