by James Burke
Quintus half expected alarm bells to start ringing but none did. The only sound was the 4WD’s idling engine. He dragged the paralyzed soldier into the booth and lay him next to the already stunned pair. After taking a flashlight from one of the unconscious soldiers, he checked once more to see if anything was coming their way or if he had been seen and it seemed all good on both accounts.
He waved to the escapees at the corner and they knew what to do. As fast as they could they ran from the corner and through the exit and into the surrounding neighborhood. Through the fence, Tina saw the Falun Gong women make their way down streets, each of them glowing with kindness, lighting up their surroundings. Then she saw Quintus waving for her to carefully join him and she did while remaining unaware that they were being watched.
At the corner edge of another building War and Kristen had just witnessed what occurred. Kristen by now was in a state of disbelief close to shock. Her current situation was one she never expected to find herself in; she was fleeing some military hospital in China with an odd man who could draw her dreams and who now warned her that her life was in danger. On top of that she just saw someone, the spitting image of the dreamy Roman soldier, take out three Chinese soldiers and then direct a whole bunch of people to flee the hospital. Then that same man and a young Asian woman ran in another direction, into the shadows and out of sight. Again, and not for the last time, Kristen wished she was back with her family in Texas.
A minute after the man and the young woman disappeared, War told her what their next move would be.
‘See that vehicle?’ he whispered, pointing at the idling 4WD at the hospital’s exit.
She nodded.
‘That’s ours,’ he said.
Berating Soldiers at 5.10 AM
As Marx exited the elevator onto the fifth floor, he shouted into his cellphone at Deng who was elsewhere in the building.
‘I simply don’t care if you just went to bed Deng, my men are having issues with security on the fifth floor, this indicates you have not done your job ensuring we’re to be treated as expected!’ Marx yelled. ‘Get here now and sort this mess out,’ he said before ending the call.
He turned a corner to find Vacher and Irfan pinned to the floor by the Chinese soldiers who now numbered around seven. Some of the soldiers looked at the well-dressed Westerner with bewilderment until he started berating them in Mandarin.
‘What is this? These men are guests of General Zhou!’ he yelled.
Marx managed to spook some of the guards but the most senior of them — a non-commissioned officer — wasn’t so easily swayed and a noisy argument began. Marx wouldn’t back down and neither would the soldier.
The Fence
Keeping to the shadows, Quintus and Tina ran along the side of the largest building on the northern part of the hospital facility. To their left the fence line eventually became shared with the airfield and at that point they stopped. As she caught her breath, Tina noticed Quintus’ attention was fixed on both the fence and the area beyond it.
‘So, what now?’ she asked.
‘The helicopter we need is in there,’ he said nodding at the airfield. He gauged the height of the fence and then looked at Tina who he guessed weighed around 110 pounds. That’s manageable, he thought.
‘How we going to get through the fence?’
‘By hopping over.’
‘What?! How?’
‘I’ll piggyback you.’
Tina had to question if she heard right.
‘Sorry, you’ll what?’
‘Trust me,’ Quintus said as he crouched for her to get onto his back.
‘Audentes fortuna iuvat,’ he said quietly.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Fortune favors the bold, in Latin.’
She still hesitated so he gave her a subtle reminder.
‘C’mon a deal’s a deal.’
And with that she smirked her way through any anxiety and hopped onto his back. He then stood up straight with her holding on.
‘Don’t let go or yell as we fly over. Everything is going to be fine,’ he said.
Fly? she thought.
With Tina securely on his back, Quintus ran a short distance and then jumped and rose in the air and, much to her astonishment, they levitated over the fence, clearing its razor wire by a good two feet. They landed gently on the other side on the grass with the hospital behind them.
‘Stay onboard,’ he told her. ‘It’s about a quarter of a mile to those choppers I saw. It’ll be speedier if I keep carrying you.’
Before Tina could respond, Quintus began running towards where he thought the helicopters were. True to his word, he could run fast, as fast as an Olympic sprinter in fact. It wasn’t long till the shapes of a half-dozen parked choppers emerged ahead of them out the darkness.
At the sight of them, Quintus sighed in relief. They were Harbin Z-9s, variants of a French model that he’d flown and done mechanics on years before. He knew them like the back of his hand.
The Call
Back inside the hospital, the heated dispute between Marx and the non-commissioned officer was interrupted by Marx’s ringing cellphone. He held up his hand to pause the argument and fished his phone out of his pocket. After glancing at the caller’s ID, he answered it aggressively.
‘Lin what do you want now?’
For the next several seconds, the Chinese guards, and even Vacher and Irfan on the floor, watched Marx turn beetroot red as he listened to what Lin had to say.
‘You have to be kidding me. He did what?!’ Marx finally yelled, spit flying from his mouth. ‘How did he escape? Of course, your father’s operation can’t proceed, especially if the others have also somehow managed to get free!’
As Marx continued ranting on the phone, Deng arrived on the scene, and he quickly pulled rank on the soldiers who had pinned Vacher and Irfan to the floor. The soldiers freed Marx’s henchmen who got back onto their feet. Meanwhile, Marx ended his call with Lin and glared at Deng.
‘Now Deng you have to really earn what I’m paying you for,’ he said.
How to Steal a Chopper
It took Quintus and Tina less than a minute to run from the fence to the concrete square where six Harbin Z-9 helicopters were parked between the runway and a hangar. After reaching the first camouflage-painted chopper, Quintus let Tina off his back.
‘You’re not bushed?’ she asked.
‘Shhhhhhh,’ Quintus replied with his finger raised to his lips. ‘We aren’t out of trouble yet.’
From one of his trouser pockets, he pulled out the torch stolen earlier from one of the paralyzed soldiers and shone its light into the helicopter’s cockpit.
‘Will it get us out of here?’ she asked him.
‘Hope so. With full axillary tanks it should fly around 500 miles, enough to get us where we need to go and then as far as the southern border and hopefully into Thailand,’ Quintus said. ‘Standard military protocol is to have helicopters on standby, ready to fly with a full tank.’
‘Don’t you need some keys?’ she asked.
‘No keys required.’
He opened the cockpit’s door and gestured for her to get in.
‘Quickly in you go.’
Quintus carefully shone the light to help Tina climb into the cockpit and take a seat. After she did so it wasn’t long before he was in the seat next to her. He put on a pair of headphones he found and then pointed at another set hanging near her.
‘It’ll get noisy. Put them on so we can talk via intercom,’ he said and then briefly told her how they worked. Then he gestured outside which was becoming lighter as an unseen sun rose in the east.
‘Now Tina while I get this thing ready to lift I need you to keep your eyes open for any security guards,’ he said.
As Tina played lookout, Quintus began running through his mental checklist; he first checked the foot pedals, then the cyclic and collective-pitch levers. After that he checked the circuit breakers were in and then test
ed if the master alternator was on etc. As fast as he could, he went through all the procedures needed for lifting the chopper into the air. Eventually — for what seemed an eternity to Tina — Quintus pressed the starter button. The engine began to whine and soon the rotor blades above them began to slowly spin. It was about then that Tina saw the shape of a vehicle driving their way.
‘There’s a vehicle coming,’ she said.
Damn, Quintus thought. We’re still over a minute away from liftoff.
‘What are we going to do Quintus?’ Tina said.
‘We’ll be in the air soon enough.’
Quintus looked in the direction of the approaching vehicle. It was a 4WD, like the one from the hospital. He saw its headlights flashing on and off. His past World War II training told him the flashes were Morse code; the message was S.O.S.
Forty feet from the chopper the 4WD abruptly stopped. Two people exited it and despite the darkness, Quintus realized they weren’t soldiers and that the person hopping out from the passenger’s side was a woman. He slid open a window and waved to them with the torch, indicating for them to approach.
Quintus next flicked a switch that turned on four exterior lights on the chopper’s lower fuselage. It was enough to help the two get to the Z-9’s slide door and as they got there Quintus realized something about the woman — it had to be Kristen, the woman who Marx had told him about. He instantly saw how she appeared similar to Kaitlyn. Her strong jawline. Her eyes. Even her ears.
War slid the door back for her to enter and a gush of sentiment hit Quintus as she got in. He quickly suppressed his feelings. Other matters needed doing; importantly getting the Z-9 in the air before airfield security personnel were upon them.
‘Tina, ask our new friends to buckle up,’ he said.
With a smile, Tina told War and Kristen to be seated and to put on their belts. As she next indicated to them to put on headphones she saw how Kristen’s aura indicated she was a good person, but she couldn’t figure out the bearded man who had neither an aura nor a shroud of darkness. Just nothing. She had never witnessed anything like it before and did not understand what it meant.
‘Okay folks it’s time to go,’ Quintus said.
The sound of his calm voice returned Tina’s thoughts to more immediate matters and she resumed looking out for security personnel. It wasn’t long till she spotted the shapes of several armed soldiers running towards them from buildings.
‘Soldiers over there, coming our way,’ she said pointing.
‘Hope everyone is buckled up,’ Quintus said. ‘It’s time to kick the tires and light the fires.’
The engine’s RPMs hit 2,500. The rotor acceleration was complete. He rolled the throttle and the Z-9 rose in the air.
BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
Three 7.62mm bullets fired from ground level hit the helicopter as it reached a height of 30 feet. One round punched through the cabin floor’s not-so protective plating, missing Quintus’ left foot by mere inches before smashing into parts of the control panel, specifically the satellite navigation system.
‘Ignore that folks, we will be out of range soon,’ he said coolly in another bid to soothe any frayed nerves.
Quintus managed to keep the chopper on course and increased its speed. After leaving the airfield and the hospital behind, he steered around the city’s edges till he spotted the weaving imprint of a river that shimmered with the first hints of daylight. He banked the Z-9 towards the river and once he was over it, he kept the chopper low in an effort to avoid radar.
When he realized the Z-9’s satellite navigation system was knocked out, Quintus knew he had little choice but to fly south via ‘human survey.’ He figured if he followed the river southwards, it would take him near where he needed to go.
Back in Canada, contemplating a return to China one day, he had studied Google Maps of the area around White Dragon Mountain. He recalled where Chengdu was in relation to the mountain and understood that the waterway he was flying over was most probably the Min River which eventually passed through Leshan; a city famous for a giant Buddha statue that overlooked the river. The 233-foot-high figure was carved out of an orange-rock cliff face. It was unmissable. For Quintus the Tang Dynasty creation was important because it overlooked a junction where the Dadu River joined the Min. Once he saw it he knew he had to turn and go up Dadu River, which would take him in the direction of White Dragon Mountain.
But first they had to get there, and he now had two more people to take care of. The added responsibilities weighed on him and even had him questioning if he should go to the mountain at all and instead attempt to fly them directly to Thailand or Myanmar. His train of thought was broken when Kristen spoke over the intercom.
‘Pilot, thank you for helping us. Can you tell us where we are going?’
Quintus was about to reply but was stopped by Tina who pointed westwards.
‘Aircraft!’ she said. ‘Over there!’
Quintus turned his head to see two military aircraft a half-mile away flying parallel with them above a mountain range. They were CAC FC-1 Xiaolongs, single engine lightweight combat aircraft. He watched their maneuvering and after several minutes it became apparent they were tracking them. There was no way they’d make it flying to the border. It made his decision easier.
‘Apologies for the belated reply to the question from a moment ago, but folks we’re going to a place called White Dragon Mountain,’ he said via intercom.
The Man Who Wanted to be Elsewhere
An agitated Colonel Deng was trying to act like he was in command of the half-dozen personnel inside the airfield’s control tower dealing with the theft of one of their helicopters. More than one of them was giving him a sideways glance. They’d earlier been told Deng was in charge while their commanding officer was away on holidays, but they quickly realized he didn’t know what he was doing. To them, the whole thing appeared dubious and certainly not within regulations.
Deng himself also had little faith in his role and he began to fear for his future. That sense of dread grew as he watched, via a pair of binoculars, the figures of Marx, Vacher and Irfan board one of two helicopters already carrying 10 soldiers between them. The plan now was that Marx would take the two helicopters to intercept the stolen Z-9 somewhere near Leshan and somehow force it to land.
The two Xiaolong jets had earlier reported the stolen Z-9 was following the Min River in a downriver direction.
But as the choppers rose and headed south, Deng only had one thing on his mind — how he was going to get out of this mess. As mentioned earlier, he had three plans to fall back on. Deng now recognized he had to take the most drastic choice which would require a three-and-a-half-hour drive to the U.S. consulate in Chongqing where he would attempt to defect. Deng assumed he could offer the Americans plenty of things they should be interested in, be it about Marx’s relationship with members of the Chinese Communist Party or the true scale of forced organ harvesting in the country’s hospitals.
His greatest concern was that, despite what he’d have to offer them, the Americans would still deny him asylum and turn him over to his own government. Indeed, Deng had found Americans to be an unfathomable people. A day earlier, one of his colleagues told him that the Americans now believed the world was coming to an end and that their population was losing the plot; rioting in the streets and giving their money away to some cult leader. How they ever managed to become a super power was beyond him.
Center of Attention
Chuck Goyette wouldn’t have expected anything less but a sold-out event at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. and on that evening that’s what he got. Eager media representatives and curious club members were seated around tables while photographers and TV crews hovered on the fringes. As he answered questions from behind a podium they hung off his every word. A reporter towards the back raised a hand to ask a question and Goyette nodded for him to go ahead.
‘Frank Flick from KW wire service,’ the reporter said introdu
cing himself. ‘There have been calls made for the arrests of those individuals you have named as Famine, Death and War. How do you respond to such statements?’
Goyette chuckled for a bit before answering.
‘Ha, ha, ha, yes, well, look, history has come to the point where what some people say or even do matters very little. The one I have named as Famine is doing his thing Down Under and Death is on the job of course, and there’s very little you can do to stop her,’ Goyette said. ‘I can tell you, she is recently arrived in the United States and is well prepared for what she needs to do.’
Despite a murmur of unease from the audience he continued.
‘Then there’s War, who’s currently in the Far East. He’s overseeing the nuclear Armageddon, but that’s all I’ll say about that. Don’t ask me anymore about War or the conflict to come because I won’t go there tonight,’ he said.
Goyette then felt his on-mute cellphone vibrate in his trouser pocket but he ignored it, just as he did to several other calls or text messages he had received over the past ten minutes. Instead he focused on the next reporter’s question.
‘Can the end of the world, as we know it, be averted?’ the reporter asked.
‘Well, that truly is the million-dollar question yet it’s something I’m unable to answer,’ Goyette said. ‘But I can tell you that I will surely discuss such matters with the president later tonight when I see him at the White House.’
Waiting to Intercept
The helicopter that Marx and his henchmen were in had landed on the riverbank opposite the giant Buddha statue at Leshan. Nearby the other helicopter, full of Chinese soldiers, was parked and waiting as well. The engines of both aircraft were left running as they prepared to lift off the ground at a moment’s notice.
