Lethal Circuit (24 page)

What mattered was the tiny pendant held tightly in the corpse’s other hand. The pendant was small and silver and contained three small stars offset in a larger ring. It looked, Michael thought, like a misshapen face and its very presence filled him with dread. Because Michael had only ever seen one other pendant like it in his life. And it had hung around the neck of his father.

41

J
ACKHAMMERS
CONTINUED
TO
bite at the armored alcove, but Mobi paid them no heed. He had larger matters to attend to, namely each of JPL’s eighteen mainframe servers which were now under his command. Mobi fired code at them, his every instruction shooting through JPL’s eighty-five-foot antenna and into space at the speed of light. His aim was to shut down the targeting system aboard the DOD’s orbital platforms thereby rendering the weapons useless. Mobi’s concern was that, though the ASAT platforms might try to eliminate the Chinese satellite, the more likely scenario was an indirect hit that would breach the satellite’s core but not stop its reentry. The unknown effect of a cold fusion breach aside, the certain result would be the dispersal of atomized plutonium into the jet stream.

Such a dispersal meant that every man, woman and child on the planet would ingest a dangerous dose of radiation. Mobi knew in his gut there was a better way and if it meant sabotaging the Air Force’s ASAT efforts, so be it. But it didn’t take long for Mobi to grow concerned. There were two reasons for this. The first was another outgoing message to Xiyuan, China. Unlike the other messages, however, this one didn’t emerge from the JPL servers and it wasn’t encrypted. It was simply a routine e-mail sent to a numbered account that got caught and cached in Mobi’s wireless sniffer. The message read, “Problem solved.”

Since the message could have originated from any wireless device in the building, Mobi didn’t have a lot to go on, but he couldn’t say it left him feeling encouraged. It was the second development, however, that actually got Mobi worried: Rand’s men had suddenly stopped making any effort to re-establish communication with their platforms. No test transmissions, no pleas for the system to let them in, nothing. And that, Mobi realized, most likely meant that Rand had quietly transferred control of the platforms back to Colorado Springs.

Mobi couldn’t control the platforms if they were running them out of Colorado. What was worse, his screen showed a new high velocity object in near Earth orbit confirming his deepest fears. Despite his best efforts, they had launched a missile. Mobi was so dismayed that he barely registered the jab of the steel jackhammer as it bit up through the concrete floor. Less than forty seconds later the first warhead hit.

42

M
ICHAEL
CROUCHED
IN
the Horten’s cockpit, staring at the leathery corpse caught in its final act of supplication. There had been suffering, even torture, that much was clear. He didn’t want to imagine his father’s last moments like this. Not if he didn’t have to. Kate pulled herself into the cockpit, finally breaking the silence.

“It’s not him.”

“His pendant, it’s exactly the same.”

Kate shook her head. “Look at the pelvis.”

Michael redirected his gaze to the corpse’s groin. From the way it lay half on its side the area was mostly hidden, the bones covered in an elastic translucent skin.

“It’s female,” Kate said.

“Are you sure?”

“See how wide the hips are? This was a woman. A tall woman by the looks of her. But a woman. Not only that. The degree of decay is way off. Whoever this was has been here for years, most likely decades, not months.”

Kate reached for the corpse’s outstretched hand, but Michael beat her to it, pulling the handful of titanium rotors out of the skeletal outstretched palm and dropping them in his pocket. Kate was right. He had allowed his emotions to get the best of him. Even if the pendant was the same, there was no way this was his father. Still there was a connection. There had to be. Recovered from his initial shock, Michael took a second look around the cockpit, and as he did, he made note of a significant feature that he had missed in his initial shock.

The capsule.

Behind a low open hatch on the rear bulkhead of the fuselage was a metal capsule like the one they had found at Chen’s. It was perhaps fifty percent larger, and it was difficult to see the whole thing, but it was obvious that this area behind the hatch was more than a hiding place. It was the reactor room.

“Kate?”

She followed his glance. “I’m with you.”
 

Michael stepped over the corpse and bent down low, climbing into the reactor room. It was pitch black in here, even darker than the main cockpit where Ted’s headlamp in the cave below had provided the occasional flash of light. But Michael’s headlamp burned strong and he was able to see that the capsule was solidly mounted to the floor and connected to the rest of the aircraft through a series of anodized ducts. The whole assembly looked like a silver spider poised to strike.

Kate entered the reactor room behind him. Casting his glance back at her, Michael noticed a length of ducting running out of the capsule and along the reactor room wall to a hinged metallic surface with a recessed handle. Michael twisted the handle and what looked like a communications console eased out of the wall.

“You know what that is?” Kate said.

“I can make a pretty good guess.”

Michael pulled the console out from its recess revealing an empty bracket. He then removed the green anodized box from his backpack and slid it onto the bracket. It was a perfect fit. He inserted the jumble of output wires from the encoding unit into the communication console’s reciprocal socket.

“Purple Sky,” Michael said.

With the installation of the rotors, Michael thought, they would have a full transceiver. But something else was also becoming clear to Michael. It hit him with the same force as those long hours in the mineshaft he had spent hopelessly waiting for his father to rescue him. As the corpse on the cockpit floor had so painfully demonstrated, there were no guarantees. No guarantees the transceiver would work and no guarantees that he was any closer to finding his dad. If anything the whole mess was beginning to feel like a dead end. He had located the Horten, but he hadn’t found his father and he didn’t know if he ever would. The thought sent a chill down Michael’s spine; a chill so real that when Ted poked his head into the reactor room, an unseen gunman holding the barrel of an MP5 submachine gun firmly against the base of his skull, Michael could honestly say that he expected as much.

43

O
NE
WEEKEND
M
ICHAEL
’
S
dad had a surprise for him. They were going on a trip. Just the two of them. Vegas baby. That was when his dad taught him how to gamble. True he wasn’t old enough to legally sit on the casino floor, but gambling Chase style had nothing to do with the tables. It was about people. They sat in the hotel lobby in front of the elevator banks wagering on the guests as they headed into the casino.

“Ten bucks the woman in green is from Idaho. She’s forty-two, has four kids, a husband who sells auto parts, and she’s here on a girls-only trip.”

“Forty-five, one kid, recently divorced.”

Then to settle the bet they’d strike up a conversation and ask. Nine times out of ten Michael’s dad was right. Even about the number of kids. But Michael got better and pretty soon he had picked up the knack. Not as well as his dad. But pretty well. Michael met a lot of people on that trip. And he learned two things. One, you could learn a lot about people just by looking. And two, he should never, ever, bet against his father.

T
HE
CAVERN
WAS
illuminated by a row of battery powered lanterns, their white light hitting the underbelly of the Horten where it sat above the cave floor. Michael knelt before the old airplane, up to his thighs in the cold cave water, Kate and Ted at his side. They were held prisoner by Huang’s men, an MP5 to the back of each of their heads.

“Excellent work,” Huang said to no one in particular. “My countrymen have been searching for this aircraft for sixteen years. You found it in two days.”

Huang paced behind them, Kate’s newly surrendered Glock in hand. Michael took the moment to cop a glance at the side of the cave, but was swiftly rebuked by a sharp tap of the MP5’s barrel. He had seen what he wanted though. There were five top ropes strung down from the mouth of the cave above. It explained Huang’s sudden appearance. He had been following closely behind them, just as he was now.

“My men tell me the transceiver is in place, but it is missing parts. Vital parts.”

“Really?” Michael said.

“I have yet to search your person,” Huang said. “I give you the choice of retaining your dignity.”

“That ship sailed back when you got me on my knees,” Michael said, raising his arms. “Go ahead. Search.”

Michael felt a nudge to the back of his head from the barrel of the MP5. Huang’s men had done a preliminary pat down for weapons upon their capture, but not much else. Michael hoped his invitation to a search was enough to keep Huang at bay.

“Hands to your side,” Huang said. “I do not believe you realize the severity of your circumstances. You are under my command and have been for some time.”

“Am I?”

“Perhaps a demonstration is in order. Reach into your pocket.”

Michael glanced down at his cargo shorts, his hems wet in the cave water. The worn cotton pockets sagged to the point that you could almost make out the bulge of the rotors he kept hidden in his pocket.

“Reach into your lower left pocket and withdraw a coin.”

Michael carefully reached past the rotors, removing a Chinese coin.

“Recognize it?”

“Yeah. It’s one yuan.”

“Throw it in the water.”

“You want me to make a wish?”

“I want you,” Huang said, “to throw the coin in the water.”

Curious as to what Huang was up to, Michael tossed the coin. It landed in the water with a small splash, sinking the twelve or so inches down to the cave floor. Huang walked in front of them and a hit a key on his phone. There was a tiny pop, followed by several large bubbles migrating to the surface.
 

“Sarin gas. I’ve neutralized it with an alkali, but the seven other charges you carry within your front pocket are active. You have been a walking chemical bomb since my men approached you on the bridge, Mr. Chase. In addition to emitting a trackable beacon, each of the coins my agents placed upon you contains a lethal dose of nerve poison. Upon release of the gas you will experience nausea and difficulty breathing followed quickly by a complete and total loss of bodily function. Within three minutes you will suffocate to death in your own shit.”

Michael considered the possibility. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was the fact that weakness would pay no dividend with this man. “Better than listening to yours,” he said.

Huang snickered, revealing a decayed tooth. “Open your mouth.”

Michael just looked at him.

“I said open your mouth.”

Michael immediately felt a crack to the back of his skull, presumably from the butt of the MP5. He opened his mouth.

“Stick out your tongue”

Michael didn’t like it, but when Huang racked the slide on Kate’s Glock, shoving the barrel between his teeth, he saw little choice but to comply. He stuck out his tongue.

“Good.” Huang withdrew a sarin chemical coin from his pocket and placed it on Michael’s tongue. “Swallow.”

“Fuck you.”

Michael spit out the coin.

Huang’s rebuke was as swift as it was brutal. He pulled back the gun and smashed Michael in the face with a left hook, his fist glancing off Michael’s jaw like a wet hammer. Michael felt a rivulet of blood running down his cheek, but found he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to give this prick the satisfaction of seeing him wince. Not if he could help it.

“You are a spy, Mr. Chase. You are a spy like your father before you and you will suffer the fate of all spies. You will die.”

“Yeah, I’m a spy. I’m a slacker Seattle spy come to kick your sorry ass.”

“Michael,” Kate said, “stop it. It’s not helping.”

“The man has a right to know who I am.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Then I’ll die with a clean conscience.”

Huang was done punching. He pulled back the integrated trigger lock on Kate’s Glock, extending the barrel of the pistol to Michael’s head. The cave was silent for half a second, maybe more.

“Enough!” Ted said. “Michael, just give him the damn rotors.”

Michael caught Kate’s glance. She kept a near-poker face, but he thought he saw the hint of a crack in the façade.

“The sooner he gets them, the sooner we can all go home.”

Huang seemed to have recovered his composure. “Please listen to your friend, Mr. Chase. I think you’ll find you’ll live longer if you do.”

Michael weighed the odds. He didn’t have much choice. Not the way this was going. Plus, he trusted Ted. He trusted him with his life. If this was how it was going to play out, this was how it was going to play out. He made his decision. MP5 still firmly planted at the base of his skull, Michael carefully reached into the front pocket of his cargo shorts and removed the handful of titanium rotors, holding them before him, palm outstretched. For a moment Huang looked like he was about to burst, unable to contain his pleasure. Then, Ted rose from his tired knees, disregarding both the machine guns and Michael’s eyes as he collected the rotors directly from Michael’s hand.

Huang said, “You did well for an American.”

“Don’t push it,” Ted said.