by Fritz Galt
“Holy guacamole! She did it,” Earl yelled. “Man was that a wild ride.” He overshot Brad and splashed up to his knees in the water.
“Hey, Skeeter. Good to see a friendly face,” he said, still panting. “Meet Dr. Yu, if he’s still alive, that is.”
“I’m not dead yet,” a tiny voice groaned emphatically.
“Hey, a Python fan!” Earl said. He helped Brad drag May’s father by the armpits a safer distance up the embankment.
May came skittering down the slope in some pretty, slinky attire and rushed to her father. She fell to her knees and gently propped his head up in her arms, sobbing wildly.
“Skeeter, ol’ pal,” Brad said. “I gotta say, that was worth it all right there.”
“Yeah, who knew saving somebody’s life could be so gratifying. But speaking of gratifying, you should hold on to this one.” Earl pointed at May. “She’s a fine person to have on your team when you’re outnumbered two-to-one in a dogfight.”
“Oh, yeah those other choppers,” Brad said. “I’m afraid I lost track of the action after I jumped in.”
“Well, it sure didn’t last long. Those guys didn’t stand a chance. Chalk it up to American battle training.”
May looked up at Earl and wiped away her tears. Then she smiled at Brad as her father seemed to come around.
“My bones. Did you save the bones?” he asked weakly.
“They’re okay, sir. Got ’em right here.” Brad lifted the dripping bag off the ground. “I even gave them a cleaning for ya.”
“Follow me,” May said to Earl and Brad. “It is not for safety here. The water is becoming higher.” Then she encouraged her father in Chinese to raise himself and get ready to move.
Brad gazed at her as if for the first time. The flat planes of her face were regal and commanding. Her mocha-colored eyes flashed in the last rays of reflected sunlight. He absorbed the tiniest details of her perfect nose and lips.
Eventually, his thoughts turned back to the river. What condition were the committee members in as the caves were covered with lapping waves?
The hopes of the Chinese nation were fading along with the lives of their Central Committee.
As if sensing his thoughts, May said, “Come. I am getting back to the helicopter and radioing General Chen. He shall do something to end this madness.”
Prime Minister Yang tried one last headcount.
“Everybody call out your name,” he said, breaking the silence.
“Zhou.”
One by one, the members of the Party’s Central Committee stated their names.
“Ye.”
It sounded like a final roll call at their memorial service.
“Ding.”
The political and social order that they had worked so hard to achieve was crumbling under a sinister and more powerful force.
“Hu.”
“Feng.”
There was no “Fu” among the responses.
“Comrades, it has been an honor to struggle with you. Long live the revolution.”
May was first to the chopper and immediately grabbed the radio. She glanced back to see Brad and Earl loading her father into the rear seat. “Commander Yu May Hua to base,” she reported in Mandarin. “I need you to patch me through to General Chen on the dam site.”
She started the rotors into a slow acceleration.
A moment later, there was a crackle on the other end. She could barely make out a husky Chinese voice above the military band that was blaring in the background.
“This is Chen.”
“General, the entire Central Committee is drowning in a cave just upstream of the dam. That is why they never showed up. Liang is trying to take over the government. I believe he has already poisoned his grandfather.”
“That is most disturbing,” the man said brusquely.
“General, you must open the dam.”
“Just one moment please, Commander.”
There was a brief pause, and the general came back on the air, with the background noise at a minimum.
“Security at the dam is under Liang’s control,” the general said, this time his voice in a whisper. “Furthermore, he is the ranking officer on the ground. I am also under his command.”
“You have to do something,” May said over the whine of the engine. “The people are depending on you.”
“My hands are tied, but maybe there is something you could do.”
“What? I cannot stop the river.”
“You have only one choice, and I wouldn’t officially recommend it.”
“What is it?” May asked.
“Destroy the dam.” Then his transmission clicked off.
He was right. She was the only one who could save the Central Committee’s lives and thus prevent Liang from ascending to the party’s chairmanship.
Her only option was to destroy the fifteen-year and seventy-five-billion-dollar effort that went into building the dam. But how much ordinance would it take? All she had was a machine gun mounted under her cockpit.
“I don’t have the firepower to destroy the dam,” she called over the radio.
“I might,” came a female voice over the airwaves. It was Jade! “I’m only half a kilometer from the dam. I’d like to request permission to take it out.”
The general’s end of the conversation was silent. After all, he was standing directly on the target.
As former head of site security and future first lady, it seemed like it was May’s call to make.
“Permission granted,” she said grimly.
“Roger that.”
“What are they talking about?” Brad asked from the back of the aircraft.
“Jade and May are going to blow the dam to smithereens,” Earl said.
“Yee-haw. That’s my girl,” Brad shouted over an abrupt rise in engine noise. “You go get ’em honey, and I’ll be waiting home with the lights on.”
May was too busy to figure out what he was trying to say. She shouted to her father in hurried, but tender Mandarin. “Are you okay, Honorable Father?”
Too weak to be heard over the din, he merely smiled and patted his bag of human remains.
Then they lifted off. She swung out over water and began to zoom across the surface of the swamped tributary. She was heading downriver toward the roiling Yangtze and the Three Gorges Dam.
“What can we do to help?” Brad asked over her headphones.
“Jade might need us,” she said. “Besides, I want to be there when it happens.”
He nodded uncertainly, as if still unsure of what she was up to.
Straight ahead in the distance, she caught sight of a helicopter gunship swooping down on the dam.
Chapter 32
Having swapped helicopters at the nearby, fully stocked Yichang Air Base, Jade was in much better shape to stop the floodwaters. She was flying solo, outfitted with a deadly new attack chopper.
The Chinese couldn’t build helicopters quite like the Americans. In fact, they never possessed an attack helicopter until they got busy copying other designs in the mid 1990s. With the Americans imposing strict technology transfer restrictions, her government had to beg, borrow, steal and lease helicopters from the Pakistanis, South Africans, Italians, French and Germans to study, emulate and build new models of their own. Jade sincerely wished she had an AH-64 Apache under her control. But a Wuzhuang Zhisheng-10 would have to do.
“Okay, let’s do some damage,” she muttered into the cockpit mike.
She plunged ahead and flipped several switches. That activated and armed all the onboard weapons, including bombs hanging from the aircraft. She aligned the center of the dam in her crosshairs, only to discover the flower bouquets and grandstands directly in the line of fire.
With her comparatively limited armaments, she would have to aim at a more strategic spot that would be sure to open the floodgates, even if it meant compromising the dam’s structural integrity. She aimed for a turbine intake opening at its base.
&
nbsp; As Liang’s secret, and former, mistress, she wished he could see her now. Maybe she could contact him on the radio, just to torment him in those last few seconds before she turned his dreams to rubble.
It was funny that Earl thought she was still in love with Liang. She’d have to convince him that the hardest thing she ever did was to let the president’s pompous grandson with his repugnant personality have his way with her. And the easiest thing she ever did was to let Earl, with his funny little body, do the same. Even if he was, in his own words, “hung like a bull mouse.”
Was she getting soft? She couldn’t afford to turn all girly now.
“Bombs away,” she said, and pressed the row of green buttons.
Meanwhile, Liang helped Professor Richter up off the floor. He watched him stagger around holding his crotch with a pained expression on his face.
By and large, Liang was satisfied. Things were going according to plan. All turbines were spinning away beneath his feet. His grandfather had finally kicked off, with a little help from Jade’s traceless poison. And the Party’s Central Committee was swimming with the ghosts.
That left only one person in charge of the nation. Himself.
The military had immediately fallen into line. Comrade General Chen already called him “Supreme Ruler.”
It was a new day for China.
With the sun a red fireball to the west and the reservoir swelling visibly below him, he had managed to create in the real world the vision that he had long cherished in his mind’s eye.
Every part of the natural and man-made world would feel China’s presence. Nothing was beyond their control.
Mr. Kissinger was heading over to shake his hand. The elder statesman might have opened up China to the rest of the modern world. But from here on, the world would remember Liang as the man who released the dragon from its cage.
Then something unexpected caught his attention. His trained eye spotted a black speck at three o’clock, just below the sun.
Within a few seconds, he could see that the aircraft was a newly developed WZ-10 attack helicopter. He scowled. Security was supposed to remain invisible so that all pictures of the new reservoir would be perfect.
The two fixed mounts protruding from its fuselage seemed to be equipped with a host of munitions from multi-barrel rockets to Red Arrow anti-tank missiles.
Then twin trails of smoke shot out from the mounts. Rockets were firing at his dam!
A moment later, a set of explosions rocked the structure. Several guests toppled off the grandstand. Others spilled champagne all over themselves.
The grinding of turbines came to a halt, and emergency systems kicked in. The symbolic light bulb beside the scale model of the floodgate sputtered and died.
Liang’s hearing was deadened from the explosion. The world seemed unnaturally silent. The cloud of dust and smoke billowing up from below smelled of crushed concrete and pungent ozone.
All the sluices and floodgates automatically began to open, and a growing torrent of water burst through beneath the superstructure.
All of a sudden, the fly-like windscreen of the chopper popped up from below the viewing platform and stared Liang straight in the face. The pilot lifted a gloved hand and pulled back the visor to reveal her identity.
It was Jade Wang! Why was she shooting at the dam? Had she been brainwashed by someone?
She saluted briefly, and then the 23-millimeter machinegun fixed to the cockpit emptied hundreds of rounds a second into the concrete foundation beneath Liang’s feet.
She was trying to shoot the floor out from under him.
He did a flying dive and rolled over Richter, who had buried his head behind a flowerpot.
Then a secondary shockwave rocked the entire foundation, as a mighty, gaping hole grew around the damaged turbine/generator units. Microphones tipped over. A hostess screamed, “My stockings!” Her voice was amplified by the speakers.
Richter picked himself up, floundered about, and held his hands over his ears. The sudden shift in height of the structure caused the helicopter’s cannon fire to narrowly miss his head.
The outer wall of the dam leaned precariously out over the river. A tuba player struggled to remain upright. He swung his instrument around wildly and caught Michael Jackson in the face with the lip of the horn.
Momentarily stunned, the famed pop star twirled off the edge clutching his face. “My nooooose,” he screamed in a high-pitched voice while plummeting into the thundering waters below.
Liang made for the exit and caught sight of the chopper swinging away. Jade may have tried to kill him and failed, but would she succeed in destroying his precious dam?
Professor Richter was still shaking the bells out of his head. He had never been so humiliated in his life. He vowed on the spot never to attend an official Chinese gathering again.
He helped a young hostess off the tilted surface of the dam. Her knee was slightly scraped under her white stocking, and she looked terribly concerned.
He lifted the young thing in both arms and raised himself to full height.
Boy, these Chinese were small people. And lucky for him, or he might not be able to pick her up so easily.
She reminded him of an Olympic figure skater that he had watched on television.
“Say, you’re not that skater from the Olympics, are you?”
She nodded.
Well, lucky him indeed. He had an Olympic athlete in his arms. He had never done a finely tuned athlete before, although he had once made love to a contortionist.
He supposed he could delay his departure from China for a while longer and take care of the little beauty.
A dazed ex-governor was staggering up to help.
“Back off, bud,” Richter said, and nudged him aside. “I’m a scientist.”
He turned his attention back to the young lady in his arms.
“So tell me. Have you ever performed in America?”
She didn’t have a chance to reply.
The piece of the structure on which they stood broke away and bent down into the area of impact. He was rolling onto his knees, then the girl’s stomach, then onto his back, then onto her butt. It felt like some perverted acrobatic act where the pain only came later, or not at all.
The young woman ended up inverted, lying face down in his crotch.
Jeez, didn’t these people have any respect for personal space?
He struggled to get free of her, while all about him the paparazzi flashed their pictures of that section of the dam that had become a huge pile of concrete and twisted steel.
But the supports beneath the demolished section of the dam still creaked and groaned and eventually gave way to gravity. The slab on which he sat began to topple and a moment later, he plunged straight down toward the water.
Brad’s girlfriend successfully landed their motley crew on the grounds of the dam’s airfield. But a light military truck with a gun mount was approaching fast. Brad lifted his gaze above the vehicle. White smoke billowed from the dam, sirens wailed, and military choppers circled like angry bees around a threatened hive.
Earl whipped off his crash helmet. “Hey, I’m in shock. That was another smooth landing, even with Brad onboard.”
May hurriedly powered down the engine.
“Stay here and be out of trouble, you guys,” she ordered, and climbed out of the cockpit.
“Relax, babe,” Brad said. “We’ll guard your old man. You go save the world.” He stepped onto the carpet of grass.
Suddenly, on an impulse, she smooched him smack on the lips, turned, and sprinted toward the armed vehicle that was heading straight at them.
For a moment he thought that she was going to whip out a pistol, fire away at the black gun barrel pointed in her direction, and go out in a blaze of glory.
Instead, he heard her voice carry over the wind. It was all a gibberish of Chinese.
“What did she say?”
Earl translated. “She wants to be taken to General Che
n immediately. She told them that the Central Committee is in grave danger.”
“I’m going to have to learn me some Chinese,” Brad muttered. He shook his head in wonderment at that complete package he saw before him, rescuing people with helicopters and braving armed soldiers all for the sake of her country.
While his heart still raced from that last kiss, he thought of his own, self-centered motives in all this. The only thing that would prevent him and his lot from being consigned to the cultural and genetic scrap heap was to interbreed with these Chinese. It might even be his patriotic duty.
He watched with pride as May slid into the driver’s seat and careered away toward the fiery chaos.
Prime Minister Yang was up to his neck in cold, still water. He could feel it inching up his Adam’s apple.
Soon it would cover his mouth.
Heartfelt memories flashed through his mind. He remembered his daughter. Her beautiful body was crushed under the treads of a tank in the bloody crackdown on the student rebellion. Did he still have regrets about sending in the tanks? He only wanted her back.
Then there was his son, an illegitimate child, not allowed under the country’s strict one-child policy. Only once every few years did he dare visit the facility in southern China where the young lad spent his days laboring over schoolbooks. Each day his grades were tracked by computer, his toothpaste doled out by a machine. Since he couldn’t hold the boy in his lap, he had to console himself with checking the child’s grades via the Internet, which he did faithfully every day. All he wanted was for his son to get into Harvard.
“Are you still there?” a shivering old voice asked.
He raised his lips above the water. “Here,” he said.
“Here,” said another, and another.
Only one member of their committee had succumbed to the water. Who would be next?
Then a very odd thing happened.
The water level slipped down off his lips. Maybe he was only tilting his face up higher. No, he hadn’t moved at all. In fact, it appeared that the water was slowly receding.
