by Fritz Galt
Both men raised their glasses and drank a toast to that fact. Terry watched the man’s Adam’s apple rise and fall with the fateful swallow. Then the governor returned to his window as if it were a PowerPoint presentation.
“We are the tenth-busiest airport in the world,” he enthused. “Forbes magazine has named us one of the best airports in the world.”
Terry could detect no effect of the LSD. “I’ll drink to that,” he said encouragingly.
“Yes, siree. We have a total of eighty-nine gates, six million square feet of public space, and when it’s fully expanded, we’ll have room for an additional terminal and two more concourses. We estimate that we’ll be able to handle one hundred billion passengers a year!”
The governor looked down at his drink as if there were something odd about the effect it was having.
“How much is international?” Terry said, to distract the governor.
Stokes ticked off airlines on his fingertips. “We’ve got British Airways, Mexicana and Lufthansa in Concourse A. And, we’ve got Air Canada in Concourse B!” He made a funny, high-pitched squeal.
He swished the drink around in his glass.
Terry reminded himself how the anti-immigration plank on his political platform might reduce the flow of international visitors to Colorado. There was no need to remind the good governor of that.
Stokes indicated the white terminal behind them. “D’you know why we call that ‘Jeppesen Terminal?’”
“I have no idea.”
“Because of my old buddy, Elrey. Elrey B. Jeppesen created those ‘Jepp’ navigational charts and maps they use in the cockpit.”
“That explains that.”
The chauffeur sped south toward several looming storage buildings.
“It’s the cargo facilities that I want to know about,” Terry said. In his speech at Coors Field, he had touched on the subject of setting up trade barriers to stem the flow of imports.
“Ah, the cargo,” the governor said, and took another swig from his glass. “We handle close to half a billion tons of air freight each year. That’s a lot of cargo and mail.”
Again, he started ticking off carriers. “We’ve got FedEx, UPS, DHL and Airborne.”
The three ramp buildings had airplanes parked around them.
“And that’s not to mention the half a million pounds of air freight and mail United Airlines handles through here each day. Half of our air cargo is lugged in and out of DIA inside the bellies of passenger jets.”
“Where do the international freight containers go?”
“Well, just west of our cargo ramp, we have a new building that accommodates freight forwarders, customs brokers and other cargo businesses. We’ve even got U.S. Customs and a Foreign Trade Zone over there.”
Terry bit his lip. That would be the first to go under his plan.
“See all these airplanes?” Stokes said, sitting back and finishing his drink. “There are thousands and thousands of airplanes here. And millions more in the sky. The world is exploding with airplanes.”
Terry reached for a coffee table book that Stokes kept in the back seat. It was time to give the governor a good whack on the head.
One hand on her cell phone, May scanned San Francisco International Airport for her father. She sat perched on a bar stool beside Jade, both dressed incognito in hip-hugging jeans and tube tops. But Igor Sullivan was on the phone and she had to concentrate on what he said.
He was calling from computer central in Langley. “Liang and your father are no longer in California. They took a flight to Denver.”
“The Rocky Mountains?”
“It’s anybody’s guess where they went from there. That’s all the information I have. Their names haven’t appeared on any other airline manifests.”
“Then we will go to Denver,” May decided.
“Psst.” Jade nudged her. Two well-dressed young studs seated at a table behind them were grinning and winking and trying to attract their attention.
“Listen,” Sullivan was saying. “I want you and Jade to be extremely careful. Liang is a dangerous man, and he’s making a move, so he’ll be hyper aware of his surroundings.”
“I know. I will be hyper.”
“I want Brad to join you in the search. He should reach America in the next day or two.”
May smacked her forehead. Brad was the last person to send on such an assignment. He had a good heart, but he was hopelessly inept. Approaching someone as lethal as Liang required military training, such as she and Jade possessed.
“Please keep him in Beijing,” she pleaded. “I do not want Liang to break him up again.”
“I don’t think Liang is after Brad. If Liang were on a personal vendetta to get back at Brad, then why would he kidnap your father and come to America?”
“Please do not call Brad.”
“It’s too late. I already did.”
She caught one of the young businessmen straightening his tie and rising to approach her. She turned away and lowered her voice. “You do not know Liang as I do. He always makes big plans.”
“That’s why I’m counting on you. The FBI is dragging their feet. My guess is they won’t touch the Chinese president’s grandson with a ten-foot pole.”
Why would they need a pole? They weren’t fishing his corpse out of a river. “Well, Jade and I like seafood.”
The young man leaned an elbow beside her on the bar and signaled the bartender to get the two Chinese travelers another drink.
May swiveled farther away from the stranger.
“I want you to find out exactly what Liang’s up to,” Sullivan said, laying out his battle plan. “As soon as he steps on the other side of the law, I can call in the FBI and local authorities.”
“I will report when he steps.”
She set the phone back in her purse. Jade was already sipping her new drink, and the businessman was handing May hers.
She flipped the man’s wrist upward. The Scotch splashed in his face and soaked his silk tie.
“Hey, what was that for?”
“Sorry,” she said. “You will have to exchange your suit.” Then she slipped off her stool and kneed the man in the groin.
“Ow!” He doubled over clutching his crotch.
“Come on, Jade,” May snapped in Mandarin. She headed back to the terminal pursued by a low whistle from the other man.
Jade struggled to keep up. “Was that necessary?”
May fondly recalled how she had met Brad. She had kicked him in the ribs the moment he broke into the ladies room at the Sonora Bar and Grill. Later, after she had enlisted Brad’s help, he had turned out to be a decent boy and a wonderful lover. Maybe this man deserved better. Perhaps there was more to learn about bar protocol.
“Where are you going so fast?” Jade broke into a jog to keep up.
“We are going to Denver.”
They had to get there before Brad arrived in America, and before he got in over his head.
Chapter 10
Brad gripped the roof of the fast-moving train with only one thought in mind. Find Liang and throw him behind bars.
Brad and Earl had scrambled in opposite directions to avoid the bullets fired upward from inside the train car. Now he was two cars behind Earl, alone to his thoughts and the cold.
The daylight faded slowly over open fields with the train barreling along at a dizzying clip. The jolts were gentle, there were few curves, and the only movement seemed an up and down rolling motion like a sled gliding over snow.
The air was thick with the smell of burning leaves.
He watched peasant families prepare their fields for planting, women yoked to plows, and men burning off weeds, and he tried to imagine similar scenes in America. He would have to travel a century back in time. If he could shake the soldier off his trail and return to America, he would once again be back in his element.
He could hunt down Liang using his Sherlock Holmesian powers of deduction, his ability to communicate in th
e local tongue, and his particular brand of derring-do. He had risked it all for the woman he loved, which had brought him to China in the first place. He would do so again.
He shivered in the dampness of a recent rain. The hamlets outside Beijing were cozy, haphazard clusters of curved rooftops and narrow passageways nicely defined by a glimmering wetness. The walled villages were surrounded by fields. Some were orchards or crops, some were fallow or plowed, others were choppy heaths bordered by occasional wide rivers.
As they entered the city, man’s sculpting of the landscape was abrupt and dramatic. Within the space of two kilometers, a bustling city had sprung up on both sides of the tracks. People lived in apartment blocks—some of yellow brick, others protected by glossy bathroom tiles, still others sheathed in sleek facades of tinted glass.
Fluorescent lighting illuminated people’s apartments, colorful signs for stores and restaurants glowed in the streets, and headlights and taillights barely moved in the clogged arteries of the city.
All seemed normal in the nation’s capital, if one wasn’t Brad West or Earl Skitowsky. They had tossed their cell phones off the train, so they had no means of calling for help. They were rocketing through city tunnels on the roof of a passenger train. And a gun-wielding hit man was waiting for them in one of the train cars below.
What were the odds of their leaving the train station, much less Beijing’s airport, alive?
Brad had found no other ladder on the side of the train, and thus he and Earl were spared being attacked on the roof. But how would they ever get down?
Like the slow-moving traffic, the railway station was experiencing delays. One block short of a long tunnel that led into the station, the train slowed to a halt. Brad stood and made his way back toward Earl. He walked lightly to avoid giving away his position. Then he reached the bullet holes.
Light from the cabin shot upward. Brad dropped to his hands and knees and crawled around the damaged portion of the roof. The car had once been full of passengers. Now there was only silence. Doubtless the gunfire had frightened them away, or killed them.
At last the bullet holes were behind him. He got to his feet and joined his buddy in the eerie silence of the stopped train. “You okay?”
“Frozen stiff.” Earl rubbed his jaw with his hands. “Let’s get off this thing.”
“How?” There was no ladder. Furthermore, they were below street level. High concrete walls blocked them on both sides.
Then he followed the direction of Earl’s gaze. His sights were set on a thin footbridge that spanned the tracks. All they had to do was scramble forward to the next train car, reach up, and climb onto the bridge.
“What are we waiting for?” Brad said.
They moved forward and reached the gap before the next car. The two cars weren’t connected by an accordion passageway like most, and Brad could see clear down to the couplings. Had the soldier already left the train? Was he waiting for them to show their faces?
Still, they had to vault over the two-meter space. “I’ll go first,” Brad volunteered.
“You just go right ahead there.”
Brad calculated the distance, measured his steps, and took a running leap over the gap. Both boots clomped down hard on the metal roof of the next car.
Someone gave a shout below. A door handle cranked open, and he heard the squeal of hinges.
He winced and remained crouched, frozen to the spot.
“Run for it!” Earl shouted.
“How about you?”
Earl was already backing away from the train door that opened below him.
“Cripes.” Brad would have to leave his friend behind. He turned and ran the rest of the way to the overhanging footbridge. He reached it just as shots rang out behind him. He reached upward and grabbed hold of the bottom beam.
Between sporadic bursts of semiautomatic gunfire, apparently directed at Earl, he heard the sequential clink of couplings pulling taut. With an electrifying jolt, the car beneath him lurched forward, and his feet shot out from under him. He clung to the overhead bar. The full weight of his body pulled against his hands. His boots scraped across the moving train.
He swung both legs upward and tried to hook a heel over the beam. Moments later, Earl’s car glided beneath him. Brad secured an ankle over the beam and reached down for Earl.
“Grab my hand, Skeeter.”
Apparently unharmed by any of the flying bullets, Earl still seemed reluctant to rise from his prone position on the roof.
Brad flashed the white palm of his hand. At the last second, Earl rose to a crouch and lifted an arm over his head. Brad tried to time the moment of contact precisely. He counted to himself as the train accelerated below him.
Earl’s hand drew within meters, centimeters. Brad grabbed for the wrist. He felt the heavy tug of Earl’s body. He braced himself and helped lift Earl to his feet. But a split second later, disaster struck.
Earl stumbled backward and began to topple over. His forward movement wrenched his hand away. Brad felt the cold fingers slip by in an instant. Then he heard the thud of a body hitting the roof of the train.
Brad jerked around to catch Earl writhing on his back. The vibration of the train sent him on a deadly slide toward the side of the car.
The train was moving too fast for Brad to safely drop back aboard and attempt a rescue. He had to hang on.
The train entered the dark tunnel and the last he saw of his friend was a pair of hands fumbling for the thin, rusty rain gutter that ran along the edge of the car.
Still suspended from the footbridge over the railroad tracks, Brad swung his free leg up onto the bottom beam. From there, he pulled his body up and over the railing. At last he was standing upright on a solid surface. He made a quick visual inspection of the railroad bed as the final car rumbled past.
Earl was nowhere in sight. Nor was the gunman, who must have climbed back aboard the train.
The metal structure on which he crouched led directly out to the city. There were no stairs or ladders leading down to the tracks from there. The only way to rescue Earl, who was well on his way toward falling off the train, was for Brad to run through the city to the train station and work his way back up the tracks.
He leaned into the cold turbulence that pursued the train and passed over the ten remaining sets of tracks.
Within minutes, he was on a busy street sprinting east toward Beijing Station. He was facing 5:00 p.m. rush hour traffic and might not recognize the station from his one previous visit. But he was determined. He had to get there in time to save Earl. He could imagine his friend either hanging from the train and being drilled full of bullets by the hit man, or lying unconscious in the path of oncoming trains.
Finally he came to a large square. He made out the train station on the far side of six lanes of traffic. He would just have to wade into the street. Then he saw an entrance to a pedestrian underpass. It would get him under the snarl of traffic and across to the square.
He clambered down the steps. Below, people packed the entrance to the local subway. He sliced through the crowd, dodged oncoming pedestrians with their stuffed travel bags and garlic-smelling breath, and climbed up the opposite set of stairs. There, he saw the orange ball of the sun sitting on the horizon. It created a silhouette of train passengers and tinged their breath that came out in wispy clouds. Wrapped in layers of sweaters and coats, they stepped out of the station and entered the city from all corners of China.
Beijing Station was an imposing edifice with several large exits. Brad ran along the square in search of an entrance. He brushed past guards at one door who were checking bags. One of them grabbed him and spun him around. But when he saw that Brad was a “long-nose,” he groaned and let him go.
Brad sprinted upstairs to the second floor and bored a hole through the moving masses. It was just before Spring Festival, and he had to remind himself that anybody who jostled him was a potential pickpocket. He intersected mobs of people at ticket booths while dusky
twilight cast a shadowless gloom over the swarming hordes.
He set his jaw and determined not to be waylaid by ticket checkers at the gate. He burst through a turnstile and headed for the train platforms. A female guard shrieked at him. But he did not stop. A whistle blew. Then he heard the pounding of feet behind him.
He ducked low and became quickly swallowed up by a throng heading down a stairwell to one of the many platforms. He squeezed through and suddenly found himself alone in the wide, dark corridor. He scanned the stairwells for a sign showing which track had the train from Shanxi Province. But there were no signs, only gate numbers.
Then ahead, he saw passengers climbing up from a platform. That just might be the right train. He shoved people aside while scanning their faces for Earl and the toothless assailant. He saw neither.
The train looked miniscule in the warehouse-shaped building. But it took him forever to get to the car where he had left Earl dangling. He checked his memory. He had been on car 11 of train T76, the 5:00 p.m. from Taiyuan City via Datong, one of three such trains from Shanxi Province that evening. After what seemed like a kilometer-long run past the expressionless multitude in the huge, swept, orderly terminal, he began to feel like some doomed character in a novel by Orwell or Kafka.
Somewhere in that crush of humanity, his buddy Earl lay dead or wounded.
Panting heavily, he finally reached car 11 and jumped aboard. All the passengers had long since cleared out of their sleeping compartments. Bullet holes riddled the ceiling where the assailant had shot at Earl and him.
At the end of the car, Brad pressed down on the door handle. The door swung open to the other side of the train where he had last seen Earl hanging by his fingertips. Nobody was there. The poor guy must have dropped onto the cinders or fallen under the wheels. He looked down the narrow gap between his train and the one loaded with passengers beside it.
He would have to backtrack between the trains to find his buddy. He jumped to the ground and set his legs in motion. The space was wide enough for two men standing abreast, but what would he do if one of the trains suddenly pulled out of the station? It would suck him underneath.
