by Robin Mahle
“If we don’t, there are just too many variables.”
A knock on the door caught their attention and Lacy stood. “That could be them.” She began her approach.
“Why would they knock? They have a key.” Aaron quickly followed her and reached for her arm. “Hang on.” He peered through the security lens and returned to Lacy, shaking his head.
“Turn-down service.” A man’s voice carried into the room.
Aaron pointed toward the balcony and mouthed, “Go outside.”
It was the only way to get Shaw’s attention, or his men’s. She walked softly toward the door, peering over her shoulder to confirm Aaron’s position.
The voice sounded again. This time, louder and more urgent. Lacy opened the sliding glass door with quiet precision and stepped outside. She didn’t know where to look and hoped Shaw’s man was still there and could get word to him quickly. This could be nothing, but it sure felt like something.
The air chilled her skin as she stood on the balcony, no coat, hat, or anything to shield her from the falling temperatures the night brought. She turned back to Aaron, raising her palms upward, relaying that she had no idea if anyone noticed her yet.
He held up his hand and mouthed, “Stay.”
Lacy held her position. She wanted to go back inside and get the gun, the one Trevor left for them in case of emergency. This was as close to an emergency as anything.
The man tried again, knocking harder and speaking louder. Enough was enough. Lacy turned outward a final time. “Come on, Shaw. See me.” She walked back in and straight toward the gun.
“What are you doing?” Aaron asked with a renewed panic.
“They’re going to get in here.” She pushed in front of him and aimed the weapon at the door.
When the sound of a card key sliding into the lock reached her ears, she whipped back at Aaron with wide eyes. They had a key. Either they always had it, or in the time they’d spent calling out to them, someone went and got one. Didn’t matter. They were coming in. Now.
Lacy turned off the safety and steadied herself. “Go. Aaron, hide.”
“Not a chance.” He grabbed a paper weight from the desk. “I hope you’re a good shot.”
The door slowly opened and that was when chaos erupted. Gunfire from the hall.
“Shit.” She pushed Aaron back and caught sight of the unknown assailant.
The door flung open, slamming against the wall, and Lacy fired. More shots sounded in the corridor. The man she hit collapsed to the ground. The other two defended themselves against whoever was in the hall firing on them. A moment later, they went down.
Aaron grabbed her arm and pulled her behind the sofa. “Gotta be Shaw out there. Jesus. Who the hell fired on us?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know, but I think he’s dead.” Her voice was steady, but fear surged through her.
“Merrick? Hunter? Where are you?”
The two glanced at one another, recognizing the familiar voice enter the room.
“We need to get you two out of here, now!”
“Agent Shaw?” Aaron stood.
“Yes. I saw Merrick on the balcony. Come on. We need to get the hell out of here.”
Lacy still held the gun and hadn’t realized she was pointing it at Shaw.
“Whoa, whoa, put the gun down. You got the bad guy.”
“I’m sorry.” She lowered her arm. “Aaron, get the laptop.”
“Hurry it along, people.” Shaw continued to canvass the hall. “My guy is downstairs. Let’s get a move on.”
Aaron grabbed his laptop bag. “Okay, okay. I’m ready.” He turned to Lacy. “Let’s go.”
They followed him into the corridor and to the emergency stairwell.
“Guests are going to start spilling out into the halls. Best if we go this way and hopefully avoid security.” Shaw jogged down the steps. “Hurry up. You gotta hurry. Police will be here soon if they aren’t already. Son of a bitch. How the hell did you end up on their radar?”
Lacy glanced nervously at Aaron but said nothing, only continued down the stairs. Her legs began to burn as she kept pace with Shaw.
They reached the bottom floor and exited into the parking garage where a car idled only feet in front of them.
“Get in.” Shaw slipped into the passenger seat. After he ensured they were in, he turned to the driver. “Get us the hell out of here. Out of Beijing.” He turned back to Lacy. “They must’ve picked you up on surveillance and figured out who you were. Damn it! I should’ve realized. This whole damn city is covered with cameras. Skynet.”
“Skynet?” Aaron furrowed his brow. “You mean like in…”
“‘I’ll be back.’ Good old Arnie. Yes. That Skynet. Only here it’s the country’s public surveillance system.”
“But I don’t understand. They might’ve picked me—us up on video, but why would I have mattered to them? My passport would’ve checked out with the different name.”
“It should have, yes. I don’t know, Merrick. They’ve got facial recognition. You must’ve been on a list and they put two and two together.”
“Are the others on their way back yet? Have you heard? We have to warn them,” Aaron said.
“They’re probably still on the flight back to Beijing.” Shaw reached for his cell phone. “I’ll text Maddox. Tell him where to go.”
“Won’t they be able to trace your phone?” Aaron asked.
“Oh yeah, you’re the hacker guy. No. This is CIA issue. It’s secure. Goes direct to satellite. Not cell towers.”
“Where are we going?” Lacy asked.
“Someplace safe. Outside the city. We’ve got a safe house—a heavily guarded safe house. We’ll be fine there until we can figure out how they knew who you were and where you were staying. That hotel was booked under a completely different name. They had to have been following you. Shit, I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. Right now, we just need to stay on the side streets and get out of here without being noticed.”
“Do you think they’ll be waiting for our team to land?” Lacy continued.
“Without knowing how they found you, I can’t say if they discovered the rest of your team, or mine. They’ll be all right. Maddox knows what to do. Best I can do is get word to them of our location. The rest, they’ll have to handle.”
The private jet aimed toward the runway and the landing gear dropped.
Axell retrieved his phone and quickly eyed Caison. “Hey, you get any messages?”
“I don’t know.” Caison pulled his phone from his pocket and checked. “No. Why?”
“Hey, Maddox, you get a message from Shaw?”
Maddox, who was in the next row up, looked at his phone. “Are you shitten’ me? We’re about to land!” He walked toward the cockpit and knocked on the door. “Hey, hey, we can’t land here. We gotta turn up, man. I mean, like now!”
“Sir, you’re going to have to sit down.” The flight attendant approached.
“Hell no. You go in there and tell the captain he’s got to pull up. We land here and we’re as good as dead, you comprende? All of us!”
“What the hell is going on?” Caison stood.
“They had to leave Beijing. Someone came after them. I can only assume it was MSS or someone under their orders,” Maddox replied.
“What? How? How the hell did they find them? Are they okay?” Axell said.
“Shaw got them out. Says they’re headed to Chengde. It’s an hour or so away. There’s a safe house.”
“Are they looking for us too? They know we’re in the air?” Axell continued. “Maddox, how do you know they’ll be on the ground waiting here for us?”
“Better to be safe than sorry. They might decide to check every American passport they come across.”
“There’s no place else to land? Not anywhere close by?” Caison said.
“No. Shit.” Maddox pushed his hand through his dark, straight hair that brushed against his shoulders. “I just don’t think we can chance it.”
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“I don’t think we have a choice. We have to land.”
Maddox picked up his cell phone again. “It’s me. I need a car on the private runway asap. We’re landing in five minutes.” He waited for the person to speak. “There was no time. This needs to happen. Can you do it?” After eyeing Axell, he continued. “Good. Keep it running.” He slipped the phone back into his pocket. “They let limos and some private cars, like town cars and shit, on the runway to pick up big-wigs so they don’t have to walk far. I gotta guy. He’ll meet us on the ground. I’ll need you two to get in the car pronto. And do as I say.”
“Got it,” Axell replied.
Maddox returned to the flight attendant. “Never mind. False alarm.”
Within minutes, the wheels touched down and rolled to a stop. Axell peered through the window. “I don’t see a car, man.”
“He’s there. Don’t you worry about it. Never let me down before. See, that’s what us field officers gotta deal with, you know? We gotta have each other’s backs. Now come on. I’ll lead the way.” He drew his weapon.
The flight attendant opened the door as the staircase rolled in front of it. “Thank you for flying…”
“Yeah, yeah. Thanks a bunch, lady.” Maddox was the first to exit but not before checking his surroundings. “I see the car. My one o’clock. Let’s do this.” He descended the steps, gun still aimed at the darkness. That was when the light flashed. “That’s him. You see? Now let’s jet before the Chinks get here with their tiny revolvers.”
Caison followed Axell as they hunched low to avoid detection. “Is this guy serious? I mean, he’s Asian, right?”
“He’s keeping us safe. That’s all that matters right now.”
They made it to the car.
“Man, am I glad to see you,” Maddox said to the driver.
“Where to, my friend?”
“Chengde. Safe house.”
Chapter 22
On a narrow side-street, cramped, ramshackle housing structures appeared in the darkness. This was where Lacy and Aaron now found themselves. Chengde—northeast of Beijing—in a suburb where less than half a million people resided and whose most popular attraction was the nearby Mountain Resort. The resort was a Qing emperor’s summer residence over two hundred years ago and was now an historic site filled with lavish gardens and a palace museum.
But Lacy would not see the beautiful gardens. Instead, she and the rest of her team would search for a way out of the country without being captured, a prospect that seemed to grow fainter by the moment. And all because she walked into the bank to make sure Aaron could do what he needed to do.
Aaron waited on the edge of the chair in the confined living room. His elbows rested on his knees and his hands clasped. “Have you heard from them?”
Shaw turned away from the television. “Not since they landed. They should be here soon.”
“Tell me we aren’t on the news,” Lacy asked.
“Not that I can see so far. That’s a good sign.”
“Boss, I see the car. I think that’s them,” Shaw’s colleague said.
Shaw walked toward the window and checked for himself. “That’s them. Maddox told me what car they’d be in.” He appeared relieved. “Okay. Now maybe we can figure out what the hell happened in Beijing and hope those guys got the job done too.”
The car pulled alongside the street running perpendicular and Shaw watched as Maddox, Caison, and Axell emerged. “They’re coming down the street now.” He moved toward the door and unlatched the lock, but not before turning his attention to Lacy. “I’ve got men on the roof watching them, in case you were wondering.”
“Open it,” the other agent said as he pulled away from the window.
Shaw pulled it open and stepped aside.
“I never thought I’d be so happy to see your ugly mug.” Maddox entered, followed promptly by Caison and Axell.
Shaw closed the door and secured the lock once again. “You had me worried, Maddox. I thought maybe you might’ve lost your touch.”
Lacy approached Will. “They found me. It was me.” She embraced him, but only for a moment before turning to Axell. “Shaw’s been trying to get answers. We’ve been here for a couple of hours. I didn’t think you were coming back.”
“They found you?” Axell said.
“They came knocking down the hotel room door,” Aaron began. “Shaw told us what to do to get a signal to him. Lacy got the signal out and grabbed the gun. We just waited for them to bust through.”
“They got a key, somehow, and opened the door, but Shaw got the message.” Lacy regarded the agent with gratitude. “If he and his team hadn’t shown up, we wouldn’t be standing here right now, I can tell you that much. They got us out.”
“You don’t know how they were located?” Axell turned to Shaw. “Were they followed?”
“I don’t think so. I think it was CCTV. They have cameras on every square inch of public space in the city. They must’ve had her picture and got a hit.”
“Damn it. Why didn’t I think of that before?” Axell rubbed his five o’clock shadow before turning to Lacy. “You can hardly go anywhere at home without being recognized. You’re famous for what you did. Guess you’re famous here too.”
“And what you did to them,” Shaw added. “The sanctions.” He shook his head. “I didn’t think. Son of a bitch. I didn’t think and that’s the problem.”
“Well, I’m here and we’re safe. That’s all that matters right now.”
“I agree,” Will began. “But how are we going to get out of here? There’s still a job to do.”
“First of all, what happened in Xinjiang?” Shaw asked Maddox.
“We know what they’re planning.” He retrieved the thumb drive. “Got audio on here. They’re planning an attack sometime during the New Year celebrations.”
“No way. They’d have to be insane to think they could pull that off. Do you have any idea how tight security is around there during that time of year? No fucking way is Yang that stupid.”
“You’re forgetting who’s footing the bill for the idea. They’ve got access to deep pockets. People can be bought. Especially here,” Maddox replied.
“Okay. So if this is the plan, how are we going to stop it?” Lacy eyed the people surrounding her. Not only did she have no idea how they were getting out of the country, but now they were going to have to prevent an attack in Beijing. She believed in their cause, but this? This was the very definition of insanity.
“Evidence,” Aaron said. “The only way we stop this is to bring the proof of it home. Proof that the US government is behind the funding. That Yang has been receiving money and the CIA had one of its own working to help him plan it, until he decided to start talking and got himself killed.”
“He’s right. Aaron traced Yang’s accounts, some of them, and found money. What did you say, Aaron?” Lacy turned to him. “Money that bounced around from shell company to shell company with Casper Janz’s fingerprints all over it. And it ended up in Yang’s personal account.”
“That’s right. We have to get the evidence back home. Take it to someone who can keep it from getting buried. Take it to Director Mobley.”
Axell looked to Shaw. “What are the odds we get this proof back home? And somehow manage to bypass CIA Director Handley in the process? I’m positive he made sure Janz was taken care of. What’s to stop him from taking us out too?”
“Absolutely nothing. But it is possible for us to get the evidence into the right hands even without our being there. I just need to get it to someone I trust.”
“Is there anyone left you do trust?” Axell continued.
“A few people.”
“And how do we get back home?” Will added. “Make sure once it gets in the right hands that it stays in the right hands? We don’t know if Director Mobley is taking orders from the CIA. And we don’t know if it’s the president who’s issuing them. Not for fact.”
“I hate to be Captain Obvious he
re,” Maddox began, “but you all mind sharing with me how the hell you plan on stopping Yang? We can tell whoever we want till we’re blue in the damn face, doesn’t mean shit cause Yang’s still got the money. Our government put this into motion. Yang won’t stop because they say ‘pretty please.’ He gets wind they want to pull the plug, I guaran-damn-tee you that he’ll disappear along with the millions. This is what he’s wanted his whole life. Ain’t nothing or nobody gonna stop him.”
“The only solution, then, as I see it, is to take Yang out.” Caison looked to his colleagues. “Find out when he’s coming back here, which I imagine won’t be too far off, and take him out of the game. No one, so far as I can tell, in his organization has his connections or will have access to the funds to pull it off.”
“That means we aren’t leaving any time soon. And they’re after us. The Chinese Police, probably the MSS. They’re after us,” Aaron said.
“They’re after me. It’s me they want,” Lacy replied. “From what we know right now, none of you have been compromised. I was careless and that’s on me.”
“No it isn’t, Lace,” Aaron said. “I asked you to go into the bank.”
“You did what?” Caison furrowed his brow. “Why the hell would you do that? Send her in there without any backup?”
“I needed a lookout. I had to make sure no one started freaking out when I got into their system. I didn’t realize.”
“Neither did I. This isn’t Aaron’s fault.”
“Look, it’s nobody’s fault, except mine. This is my territory. It was my responsibility to make sure you stayed safe.” Shaw regarded Axell. “I knew about the cameras. Everyone knows about the cameras. They’re friggin’ everywhere. What I didn’t know was that they’d have her in the system. That’s something I should’ve picked up on. Now it’s up to me to find a way to get her out.”
“We have ample resources, here, Lacy,” Axell began. “I have every confidence Shaw can find a solution. In the meantime, you’re safe here. We all are. And we need a way to get Yang back in the country. Maddox, what can you do? Can you use his ex to get a message to him?”
