Global Tilt

by Roger Weston

  Global Tilt

  A CHUCK BRANDT THRILLER

  ROGER WESTON

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, dialogue, and plot are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Weston Publishing Enterprises

  All rights reserved.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 1

  Port of Bellingham

  When Chuck heard the sound of opening doors, he switched off his flashlight. Darkness flooded the freezer hold of the old processor ship. He pressed his back against the frost-covered wall and drew his gun with numb fingers. The coldness of the freezer wall penetrated his jacket and chilled his back. He stepped along the wall with unfeeling toes.

  It wasn’t totally dark. Murky yellow light oozed through the vinyl-strip curtain between the packing room and the main freezer, which stretched forty-feet wide and eighty-feet long.

  He heard the sounds of a door slam shut, like someone had let the lid of a coffin slam shut. He eased along the wall toward the fish-boxing room. A man pushed aside a few of the clear vinyl strips with his cane and stepped into the darkness of the main freezer. He looked over at Chuck.

  “What are you doing with your gun out, Brandt?” It was his old pal Lawrence Robertson. Tall, lean, and gaunt—with his shadowy eyes and craggy face—he looked like a wax recreation of Abe Lincoln.

  “You should have called out before you came down here.”

  “A bit paranoid, aren’t you, Chuck?”

  “You would be, too, in my shoes.” Chuck holstered his weapon in his concealed holster. “I don’t recall telling you where I’d be today.”

  “Stuart told me.”

  “You and your brother talk too much.”

  “He gave you a lead on this ship, didn’t he?”

  Chuck nodded. “So what brings you all the way here from Washington D. C., anyway?”

  “We got a major problem.” Lawrence shifted his cane from one hand to the other.

  As they talked, Chuck could see their breath as the water vapor in their exhale condensed into clouds of fog.

  “We—meaning who?”

  “Our country for one, but it’s a lot bigger than that.”

  Chuck nodded. “Let me show you something.” He led Lawrence back through the vinyl curtain into the boxing room and removed a piece of plywood from the wall, revealing a dark shaft—eight-feet high and six-feet across.

  “What’s in there?”

  “Blast freezer,” Chuck said. “There’s two of them running up into the bow. There’s a big fan at the other end that creates a wind tunnel and freezes seafood in just a few hours at minus 40°F.”

  Lawrence tapped his cane on the floor and then glanced at his watch. “I’d ask you why you’re interested in owning a freezer ship, but to be honest Chuck, I don’t have time. I have a major problem and time is short.”

  “I’m not keeping you here.”

  “Look, Chuck, I didn’t just show up here by coincidence. I need your help.”

  “What makes you think I’d be willing to work with the CIA and its unreliable leadership?”

  “It’s not about you, Chuck. Anyway, the CIA is hamstrung. They can’t act fast enough, so I’m here on behalf of Stuart. You can’t deny that he is loyal.”

  “True, but I don’t work for OFFSHORE.”

  OFFSHORE was a private intelligence operation that specialized in action. For various reasons, such as times when the operators had to be deniable and not connected with the US government, it was expedient to contract out field work. That’s where OFFSHORE came in.

  “You need therapy, Chuck. The whole world is not out to get you. Some people do care, you know?”

  “Yeah, in this field they’re harder to find than a polar bear in Death Valley.”

  “Give me a break. You care about people.”

  “Right, and you came all the way across the country to find me. Wasn’t there anyone closer?”

  “Not with your skills and the fact that you speak Chinese. Are you gonna at least hear me out?”

  “I’ll listen, but I have other things going on these days.” Chuck switched on his flashlight and shined it into the blast freezer. The shaft was full of six-foot high aluminum fish racks, but there was a walkway on the left side that led back to the giant fan. “I’m going to be running a fish processing ship—as far from civilization as possible—as soon as I get this ship fixed up.”

  Lawrence turned on his heels and took a couple of steps. Then he turned back and leaned forward on his cane. “A North Korean defector, a beautiful girl named Shi, has delivered some dire news. Three days ago, a ship delivering twenty nukes from North Korea to Iran was secretly hijacked and diverted from its course. The GPS was shut off. It disappeared off the electronic map. Yesterday, the ship was found moored in a cove of the wild coast of Borneo. When commandos boarded it, they found that the ship was abandoned and the nukes were gone.”

  “You’re telling me twenty nukes are missing? This is a bad joke.”

  “We need your help. We have to find the nukes. Every minute we waste, the lower our chances of success. Will you help us?”

  Chuck was quiet for a moment. He switched his light back on and shined it up into the freezer shaft again. He frowned and turned back to Lawrence. “The nukes could be anywhere.”

  “True, but I have one lead. According to Shi, before the ship sailed from Pyongyang, the captain was assassinated by an Asian-American turncoat spy named Jimmy Chang, who lives in Macau.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Macau, China

  Located on the western side of the Pearl River Delta, the Macau Special Administrative Region was a blend of Portuguese colonial buildings, skyscrapers, and modern casinos. It was promoted as ‘the gaming centre of the world’ and boasted revenues many times larger than Las Vegas. With 20,500 people per square kilometer, Macau packed in four times more people per square kilometer than high-density areas in Los Angeles. It was the most densely-populated area in the world.

  Chuck Brandt was suffering from jet lag after the long flight over the Pacific. He’d been in Macau barely two hours. As he was walking up the sidewalk toward Jimmy Chang’s home, he found that he was also walking down a smoky street. He heard a passing pedestrian mention a fire.

  “Wonderful,” Chuck mumbled to himself, shaking his head. “There’s gonna be cops and authorities all over this place. Just great.”

  As he checked the buildings for addresses, he took in the scene. Chinese lanterns were strung across the street on wires, and smoke was drifting through the lanterns overhead. He passed many anxious people who were hurrying in the opposite direction. One man caught Chuck’s attention because the Asian was wearing sunglasses in the dark. Not only that, he was wearing black gloves and a black jacket. As the man walked under a streetlight, Chuck noticed the man’s black jacket. It had glass buttons that contained dead insects. The poor creatures were entombed in the glass. Chuck put the creepy man out of his mind. He had other things to think about. After all, Chang was a dangerous man—a turncoat trader and an international assassin who would kill anyone to save himself, and Chuck was getting close to his house.

  Macau was covered with skyscrapers and multi-story buildings of condos and more condos. Then he saw a striking exception to that—the home of American turncoat spy Jimmy Chang. The American expat lived in the middle of Macau’s Portuguese district in a three-story colonial building that
was sandwiched between other three-story buildings. The yellow structure was high profile and Chuck was surprised that the flamboyant Chang had both the money and the bad judgment to live there.

  The property was surely worth millions even though the building was begging to be torn down to make room for a new casino. Demolition would not be necessary, however, because the building was on fire.

  Flames leapt from the first and second stories. Smoke billowed out and plumed up into the twisting limbs of the banyan trees that filled the tile courtyard. Many people were hurrying away from the building with their hands over their mouths. A woman screamed as she pointed up at a second-floor window. Just then, a man on fire smashed thru the window, plunged downward, and crumpled when he hit the sidewalk. Chuck ran between two burning banyan trees and dragged him by his feet to get him clear of the heat. Then Chuck used his own dinner jacket to snuff out the man’s burning clothes. Chuck could tell that the man was dying, not just from the burns and the fall, but also from the knife that was sticking out of his chest.

  Chuck reached to check his pulse but didn’t because of burns. He didn’t have to. The man coughed and opened his eyes.

  “Help me,” he rasped.

  Chuck turned and yelled at the bystanders who were watching from twenty yards away. “Call an ambulance!”

  Chuck turned back to the stabbing victim. “Who are you?”

  “J—Jimmy Chang.” He coughed and tensed as if coughing was pure agony. His head turned from side to side, his eyes pinned shut.

  Chuck gasped. “Who did this to you?”

  The man screamed in agony from his wounds.

  “Who?”

  “The man with the buttons.” He was choking his words out between fits of coughing. Blood was bubbling from his lips.

  Chuck remembered the man he’d passed on the street a few minutes ago, the man with the black jacket and the insects entombed in the buttons. “What’s his name?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Chuck turned to the watchers. “Where’s the ambulance?” he yelled. “Did you call the ambulance?”

  A young guy with wavy hair said, “They’re coming, mister.”

  Chuck said, “Chang, I don’t know if you’re gonna make it. You’re bleeding badly. This may be your last chance to do the right thing. What happened to the nukes? Millions could die.”

  “Tra—transferred to Russian ship…” He grit his teeth and shuttered. “Shipped to Iran by new … ss—sellers.”

  “What ship?”

  “Sev—Sevastopol.”

  “Where is it going?”

  Chang was dying fast. “I—I was wrong,” he said. “My whole life wrong.”

  “There’s still time to change your path.”

  “What do you know about it? You’re Chuck Brandt.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I—I had a contract on you—since this morning.”

  “You’ve got to do the right thing while there’s time.”

  “I know you.” He winced. His head turned from side to side as he groaned. I regret—I— Make it right. Stop them.”

  Chuck said, “Who is the guy with the insects in his buttons?”

  “He worked for—” He shuddered then moaned out in pain. “They said … nothing would happen.”

  “That was a big gamble you took.”

  “It’s worse. I’m sorry.”

  “What do you mean worse?”

  “Detonation. Mass death.”

  “When?”

  “Th—three hours.”

  “Where?”

  Chang shuddered and the life went out of him. His body flattened out on the tiles.

  Chuck was still kneeling over the body when he heard someone down the street yell.

  Two men in black balaclava face masks were running through the smoke. They opened fire on Chuck. Spectators screamed and ran for cover. Chuck fled around the burning building.

  CHAPTER 3

  As Chuck raced around a corner, he noticed doors on both sides of a narrow street. He ran at one door and kicked it open. It cracked against the inner wall. Then he flashed across the street and launched himself at a wooden door in that building, blowing the door off its hinges. The door crashed down inside. Chuck ran over it and up the stairwell. On the third floor, he looked out a narrow window. Down below, he saw the men in black talking excitedly. One was pointing back and forth between the two buildings. They split up, one going in each of the open doors. Chuck pressed the button and waited by the elevator. It arrived promptly and he held it open. He couldn’t go down because that could be a death trap. He waited until he heard the stairwell door open up. He peeked around the corner and made brief eye contact with the shooter. He ducked back into the elevator and pushed “close” and “1”.

  Now it was a race. He knew the shooter would be taking the stairs and could probably beat him down three stories. Chuck reached up and moved a ceiling panel so that there was a crack big enough to peek through as if he was hiding on top of the elevator; however, he stayed put, flattening his back to the wall just inside the door so he would be out of sight when the doors opened. As he pressed himself into the front corner, a scattering McDonald’s trash on the floor caught his attention. He shook his head.

  As the doors opened, a burst of gunfire hammered the back wall of the elevator. The shooter cursed in Chinese and approached the elevator, firing at the ceiling, riddling the misplaced tile. As the barrel of his gun came into view in the doorway, Chuck’s hands leapt outward. He grabbed the barrel and slammed the stock back into the shooter’s chest. The shock hit the shooter hard. He lost his grip and fell backwards. As he started to get up, Chuck swung the rifle at him like a bat. The stock hit his neck where it joined the shoulder. The shooter was knocked out cold.

  Chuck wiped the gun for prints and threw it in the elevator, pushing “7”. He was about to run, but hesitated. His hand stopped the elevator door from closing. He picked up the McDonand’s trash. As the doors closed, he ran around the corner and waited for a minute. He heard running footsteps. A man cursed in Chinese. Chuck heard more running and a door opened. Chuck peeked around the corner just in time to see the second killer disappear into the stairwell. No doubt he’d seen the elevator going up and was chasing what he thought was his quarry.

  By now the sounds of sirens were not far off. Chuck put the McDonald’s refuse in a trash can and left the building. He walked peacefully down the street, passing several pedestrians.

  He thought about what the turncoat spy Jimmy Chang had said: “Detonation. Mass death.” Three hours.

  A frown weighed on Chuck’s lips. His mind seemed to work in slow motion. The facts took on astonishing consequence. Within three hours, the world was in danger of a horrific event. A nuclear blast would only be the beginning of the terror. Wind patterns would carry radiation and fallout far and wide. Not to mention that detonating nukes could cause nuclear-armed countries to panic, overreact, and respond with nuclear attacks. Millions could die.

  Chuck thought of Lucy Lucero, a lady who lived on a boat that was docked next to Chuck’s fishing boat in Gig Harbor. Chuck had just met her a few months ago because Gig Harbor—like all harbors—was just a temporary refuge for his boat. Lucy’s puppy had escaped, and Chuck caught it for her because she was not able to move quickly. When he brought her puppy back, Lucy told Chuck her situation. She had struggled financially for years and finally gotten a job as a fourth-grade teacher. She was so excited. Then on a cold, rainy day she’d been running from her car in the parking lot to the school. When she reached for a stair railing, she slipped and fell back down the stairs. She left in an ambulance. She’d broken her back and spent three years in physical therapy, struggling to make a comeback and restart her career.

  Chuck shook his head at the irony. And after all Lucy had gone through, now that she was finally ready to start pursuing her dream again, her life might suddenly be wiped out in seconds because of some nut job. Chuck could only imagine how
many millions of good people like Lucy could die if a nuke went off in a random city. Chuck knew he could not passively sit back and let that happen.

  No. Life was short enough already. The trials and tribulations were hard but precious. Life was a chance to overcome obstacles and rise above adversity. It was sometimes grueling and crushing, but also fulfilling because of the challenges it posed. Life had to be cherished and protected.

  Chang’s words tolled in Chuck’s brain like the bells of doom:

  “Detonation. Mass death.”

  Chuck had to get answers. Who was behind this horrific plot and where would it happen?

  Chuck had to get information fast….

  The streets of Macau were always busy. People flocked around the markets and emerged from doorways. Men in jeans and baseball caps wandered around like it was their day off or they were tourists taking a break from the casinos. Women in dresses and shorts waited in lines by counters. Kids in jeans, plaid shirts, and tank tops made their way through the throng. A steady flow of people walked down the narrow pedestrian streets. The sounds of hammers announced construction in unseen apartments overhead. Signs with Chinese characters hung over every shop with English translations painted below them. Voices bounced around the streets like pin balls. The Chinese language filled in the air. With all the talking people, it sounded like a party. Some proprietors stood in front of their stores and pitched their wares to passersby. Others carried trays of food samples like hors d'oeuvres at a formal gathering. Side alleys featured dumpsters.

  With cops swarming the area and assassins hunting Chuck, a pedestrian ran up to a cop, pointed at Chuck and in Chinese screamed, “That the one. I saw him come out of the fire.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Chuck turned a corner and ran up the pedestrian-filled street. He couldn’t sprint or he would have knocked people down. Instead, he ran like a shifty running back, dodging left, cutting right. He tried to avoid contact with locals, but it was tough. A taste tester with a tray of food samples stepped right in front of him. The tray flipped up in the air. Food flew. Chuck cut through an alley, sprinted past dumpsters and emerged on another busy pedestrian street, but now he was in the touristy area. A glance over his shoulder told him that the cop was no longer in sight. Chuck thought that maybe he’d lost him.