Beyond all Limits (28 page)

7

‘Where is he?’ asked General Wu, two assistants offering him towels to rub down his rain-soaked skin as he paced furiously around the operations center underneath the Zhongnonhai compound.

‘We don’t know,’ answered Zhou’s aide, Major Wang Lijun. ‘He managed to get a boat up into Qianhai Lake, which we found abandoned. We’re tracking him into the streets around Houhai, and we’ve got the choppers up now, so it shouldn’t be long.’

‘It better not be,’ Wu growled, his anger having grown with every passing minute. Yes, he could use the incident to his benefit; but he also hungered for revenge, his perfect afternoon ruined. And it wasn’t just the assassin; there was the explosion at the Forbidden City to consider too.

‘What about the Politburo?’ Wu asked next.

Again, Wang was forced to shake his head in sorrow. ‘The entire area is a no-go zone for now,’ he explained. ‘Most of the Outer Eastern Palace has been damaged, and the Hall of Imperial Supremacy has been completely destroyed, we have teams there now, still trying to put out the fires.’

‘Is it contained?’

‘For now,’ Wang said, ‘and we should be grateful for the rain, it’s helping to stop the fires from spreading. But I’m afraid we won’t know the fate of the people who were being kept there for quite some time. However, given the extent of the damage, it is highly unlikely that anyone survived.’

Wu bowed his head, considering the matter. What could have caused such an event? His immediate thought was that it was an American attack. Despite Beijing’s near-impenetrable anti-aircraft capabilities, an American stealth bomber had an outside chance of beating it, getting in close enough to drop a precision-guided bomb, and getting out again undetected.

‘I want air surveillance increased immediately, all personnel to be working on it,’ Wu demanded, ‘pull everyone you can off whatever else they’re working on and concentrate on radar coverage of this area.’ He gestured to another uniformed officer. ‘Get all of our surveillance aircraft up in the air,’ he said, ‘and do it immediately. Any other aircraft we have, get them looking too.’ He turned to a naval officer. ‘Put the word out to the fleet, we have a possible enemy aircraft in the area, possibly a US stealth plane, get them all looking.’

The officers snapped at the commands and rushed away to implement them. It made Wu feel better, but only slightly. What if the Americans had some new weapon of which he was not even aware? He had heard rumors about space-based weapons, which – depending on who you talked to – relied upon laser, radar or electromagnetic pulse technology for their effects.

But if President Abrams had use of such a weapon, why target the Hall of Imperial Supremacy? If the attack had been carried out by the Americans – and only the Americans had the technology that could have beaten his country’s defenses like that – then why would they have wanted to kill the entire Politburo? What was in it for them? Surely it would have made more sense to target the Zhongnonhai?

Unless it was a simple error – either US intelligence had suggested that a different set of people were in the target building, or else the bomb
had
been aimed at the Zhongnonhai, and had hit the Forbidden City by mistake?

None of it made any sense whatsoever.

The chaos of the basement control room – dozens, maybe hundreds of personnel, both military and civilian rushing around, updating maps, monitoring computer screens, barking orders, checking satellite feeds, observing radar and sonar systems, everyone in a frantic rush to combat the threat to China’s national territory while at the same time preparing for the incredibly complex operation to invade Japan – faded out of General Wu’s consciousness as he thought hard about what had happened that day.

Dietrich Hoffmeyer – who had he been, really? Supposedly a Dutch businessman, a negotiator for the firm TransNat Drilling; a man who had already been in Beijing when Wu had assumed power. Could it be that he was a sleeper agent? A member of the CIA? Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service? Or else the
real
Hoffmeyer was somewhere else, replaced after the coup by a lookalike, a Western assassin in disguise. Photographic analysis would be used to help answer that question, and right now Wu also had teams going through Hoffmeyer’s hotel room, searching for evidence of the man’s real identity.

Capturing the man, of course, would be the perfect outcome; under ‘tactical interrogation’, Wu was sure the assassin would break, and he could learn everything there was to know about him, including the most important question of all – who did he work for?

Of course, Wu could
claim
the assassin worked for any nation in the world – the real national culprit would only deny it anyway.

Wu was just beginning to chart out his future actions – deciding when and how to go public with his accusations – when he noticed Wang gesturing towards him excitedly, talking on his radio to someone.

Wu rushed across the busy control room. ‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘You have news?’

Wang nodded his head, signing off the radio and turning to his general. ‘Yes sir,’ he said breathlessly. ‘One of our helicopters has seen him.’

‘Where?’

‘On the rooftops in Houhai,’ Wang responded. ‘He is exposed, and we have police moving in on foot and more choppers on the way.’

Wu nodded his head. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Alert all local units, military as well as police, secure the area, cordon it all off. We’ll make sure the bastard doesn’t get away again.’

‘Yes sir,’ Wang acknowledged, getting back on his radio to relay the orders.

For the first time since the incident began, Wu allowed himself to smile.

Soon he would be able to ask all of his questions to the man himself.

Navarone moved as casually as he could along the underground subway tunnel, headed towards Qianmen Station, the nearest to the group’s exit point from the sewers.

He was aware that – as a Westerner – he would be under greater scrutiny than the other commuters who flowed through the busy tunnel corridors, but he was trained to blend in no matter what the circumstances. And he knew that – if stopped – his ID should stand up to scrutiny.

He couldn’t even see the other members of Force One, who were spread out throughout the tunnel, and took this to be a good sign – if he couldn’t see them, then it was unlikely that a poorly trained subway security guard would notice them either.

The only member of his team that he
could
see was Julie Barrington, and that was only because she was supposed to be visible.

Dressed in a conservative grey suit with glasses, hair tied back in severe style – they had all washed and changed back in the sewers before emerging through an abandoned staff locker room – Barrington looked exactly as she should in her new role as professional tour guide.

Her tour group was following dutifully behind her as she led them with an identifying flag held high – the sign for the Shanghai League of Women in Business and Industry.

Navarone watched the group, twenty-one middle-aged ‘women’ in business suits marching purposefully along towards Qianmen Station.

He almost smiled. The Politburo members – despite their earlier protestations – were pulling off their disguises pretty well. In fact, the men didn’t look all that different from the three
genuine
women in the group. Even Liang Huanjia was getting into the swing of it, and Navarone couldn’t help but wonder what had happened at that party three years ago that Chang had mentioned.

But on second thoughts, he decided, perhaps he was better off not knowing.

There had been discussions about breaking up the members of the Politburo into smaller, more discrete groups – less of an obvious target, pairs and threesomes would draw a lot less attention. But there had been the issue of security to consider – Navarone couldn’t be sure of each member’s loyalty, or how they would react in such circumstances. If they were too broken up, it was inevitable that the five members of Force One would lose track of some of them, and then who knew what they might do. It was possible they would try and escape on their own, and then – if captured – everyone else would be put at risk.

By keeping everyone together as a single group, it allowed Force One to keep an eye on them, group pressure also helping to make sure they followed the plan.

Posing as women helped too – it was clear that nobody wanted to stop a league of presumably high-powered businesswomen; it just wasn’t worth the trouble.

As they broke through onto the subway platform, Navarone instantly took in all of the security, noticing that it had been increased from previous CIA reports. But he remained cool and relaxed, just one of hundreds of people boarding the subway train west to Xianwumen.

He watched as Barrington boarded with the ‘women’s league’, entirely unmolested by security – noticed that the armed guards even moved respectfully to one side as they passed – and then he was there at the train doors too.

He saw how the guards moved their eyes left and right, scanning the crowds, felt himself tensing, willed himself to relax; and then he too was onboard, just seconds before the train moved off silently to the next destination on their journey home.

8

The helicopter – a Harbin Z-9 utility chopper, a Chinese-licensed version of the French Eurocopter Dauphin – hovered close by Cole, the pilot getting it down low near the rooftops.

The helicopter itself wasn’t armed, but the soldier hanging out of the open side doorway certainly was – the man aimed an automatic shotgun at Cole, its spread of pellets almost guaranteed to hit him at this range.

Cole calculated his options. Down below, he knew the streets were crawling with police. There had been the initial surge from the whistle blasts, and then surely more from subsequent radio communications. There would be soldiers there soon too, he was sure – he still wasn’t far from Beihai Park, and the whole complement of security forces would soon be on him.

It struck him as lucky in a way – at least his escape was diverting attention from the Forbidden City and the escaping Politburo.

Descending to the streets directly below was obviously out of the question; but as he looked across the roofs, he wondered if he could make it further across, lose both the helicopter and the security forces, and then make his way down to the streets in relative safety?

But as soon as he’d had the thought, he discounted it; two more helicopters were sweeping in, rotors spinning loudly against the continued background noise of the storm. If he moved across the rooftops, he would only be followed – and either shot, or monitored until the police and military could finally move in.

He could see the man with the shotgun shouting toward him, but the rain was too loud, the rotors almost deafening, and he couldn’t hear a word. But, straining to hear the man, he began to pick up sounds from behind him – the police had started moving up the walls. They would be on him soon, and then he would be completely without options.

As it was, there was only one left available to him, and he took it before he lost the opportunity forever.

He stood on desperately shaky legs, the leather-soles shoes of a successful businessman woefully inadequate for balancing on an angled roof in the middle of a blinding storm, and put his hands in the air.

The man with the shotgun beckoned him forward, no doubt wanting to be the one to perform the arrest, hoping it would garner him the gratitude of the entire military government, and Cole complied, edging steadily closer to the hovering helicopter – and further away from the approaching police as they scaled the walls behind him.

Cole was in arms’ reach of the soldier now, his body language designed to put the man at ease, relax him into making a mistake – just a fraction of a second was all Cole needed.

It happened just moments later, a slight relaxation in the man’s shoulders which indicated a shift in mental readiness, the sense that he’d already won, and Cole capitalized on it instantaneously, his hand shooting out to deflect the barrel of the shotgun.

But Cole could never have anticipated the sudden updraft, which came out of nowhere and bumped the helicopter upwards, the soldier recoiling back inside the aircraft as the pilot struggled to control the bucking chopper.

Cole had already committed, and his leather soles lost their grip, causing him to fall forward. He teetered on the edge of the roof, his balance gone, but instinct took over and he reached suddenly upwards, his iron-like grip taking hold of the lower part of the open door, the helicopter taking him clear of the roof as it rose higher and higher into the air, the pilot not wanting to risk hitting the rooftop in the turbulent air.

The conventional door flapped about wildly in the stormy air, and as he was pulled off the rooftop, Cole was convinced he would lose his fingers when the door slammed finally shut.

But he felt the door stiffen and set into place, and when Cole looked up, he saw one soldier wedging it open while the other came back into the doorway with his shotgun, aiming it down at the helpless Cole.

In his peripheral vision, Cole saw men pulling themselves up onto the rooftop, behind and below him, and knew their own weapons would also be tracking towards him, although they would be reluctant to open fire for fear of hitting the helicopter crew.

Still fighting the winds, the pilot peeled away from the rooftop completely, Cole dangling below, both hands now clenched tight around the bottom of the metal door, gripping harder than he’d ever gripped before, until he felt that his knuckles were going to break through his skin.

But in the maelstrom of the storm, in the fear and confusion of the helicopter’s violent maneuvers, Cole knew he still had one chance.

And – in the blink of an eye, before anyone could have predicted what he would do – he pulled even harder on the bottom of the door, swinging his legs high towards the open doorway beyond.

His legs met the barrel of the automatic shotgun, wrapped tight around it, and pulled down with all his remaining strength.

The shotgun jerked forwards with the force of Cole’s pull and – unable to let go in time – the soldier was pulled right along with it, straight out of the aircraft. Cole let go instantly and – with a horrifying scream – the man plummeted to the rain-slicked alleyways below, the shotgun still in his hands.

In what he assumed was a fit of sudden, fear-induced panic, Cole felt the chopper lurch downwards, the pilot trying to smash him into the nearest building.

The second soldier also tried to solve the problem by slamming the door shut, obviously hoping to sever Cole’s fingers and send him falling to the streets below, just like the man before him.

But Cole acted even quicker, swinging up a leg into the cabin and blocking the door with his tucked-in body.

The pilot turned the chopper on its side, tilting over violently, and the door swung open again, Cole flying out with it, only just managing to keep his grip. The second solider wasn’t so lucky though, preoccupied with trying to get Cole and not having any warning of the pilot’s intentions, and Cole watched as he lost his balance and smashed his head off the metal airframe. His unconscious body collapsed into the doorway, held in position by the strap around his waist, and Cole recognized the gift for what it was – with the body in the way, the door could no longer close on his fingers.

But as Cole dangled from the door, his grip loosening now, pain ripping through his hands, his forearms, his shoulders, he could feel himself slipping, and knew he couldn’t hold on for much longer anyway.

The wind was rushing past him, the speed of the helicopter fast – so terribly fast – and Cole knew that the pilot was determined to kill him now, to strip him from the helicopter and send him plunging to his death.

As he hung on for dear life, he took in the sights around him, below him, his mind spinning as it tried to make its calculations. He was over water now, and he didn’t know whether they were over Qianhai Lake, or maybe even as far south now as Beihai, the speed incredible as one hand was finally wrenched free, the fingers of his other hand tortured as they clamped down even harder, until – mercifully – he was able to get both back on the door again.

He could see the familiar terracotta roofs of the Forbidden City now, and understood that the pilot must have lost it completely in his desire to kill him, plunged into a lunatic straight-line death flight, determined to shake Cole off once and for all.

Cole felt his hands going, knew it wouldn’t be long before the end; but then he saw it through his blurred, wind-damaged vision – the huge, curved structure coming fast towards him, its ellipsoid dome of titanium and glass resembling a gigantic black egg floating on the water of a huge man-made lake.

Cole recognized the National Center for Performing Arts immediately, perhaps Beijing’s most iconic building after the palaces of the Forbidden City; but what was more, when the chopper passed over it in the next few seconds, it would clear the apex of the structure by not more than a few feet at best.

But it
would
clear it – a single opportunity that was Cole’s best, his
only
, chance of survival.

Jake Navarone disguised his fear well; nobody looking his way would have any idea of the inner turmoil he was experiencing.

He was standing in a queue at Beijing South Station, his ticket for the ultra-fast, three hundred kilometer-per-hour Maglev train to Shanghai in his hand. The group had switched trains at Xianwumen and taken Line Four down to Beijing South, the huge, imposing modern structure which was the departure point for the world’s fastest train. The Maglev – even at restricted speed, well short of its maximum of five hundred kilometers per hour – would still demolish the eight hundred mile distance to Shanghai in just under five hours, with one stop at Nanjing South.

The tickets for the entire group had been pre-booked by the CIA, and left with the disguises in the sewer system, and Navarone reminded himself that – if he lived through this – he would have to send something very nice to the Beijing station. They’d certainly done an incredible job with the preparations, at such short notice.

But it wasn’t the authenticity or validity of the tickets which caused Navarone’s rapidly increasing heart rate, however; it was the heavily patrolled security checking line that all passengers had to go through in order to board the train.

He wasn’t so concerned for himself; he felt confident he could talk his way through anything, and they had no reason to suspect that he wasn’t who he said he was anyway.

No, what he
was
concerned about was the eighteen male Chinese politicians masquerading as women, the entire group of which was now approaching the security desk.

Would they give themselves away?

Their disguises – which had looked so good in the dim light of the sewer tunnels – now looked inadequate in the extreme, and for the first time, Navarone found himself questioning the very sanity of their plan. What if they had to respond to questions? Would their voices be convincing, or would they give the game away immediately? Would their awkward body language raise the suspicions of the guards?

Navarone, in a separate queue, inched steadily ahead towards his own checkpoint, all the while watching the passage of the Shanghai League of Women in Business and Industry as surreptitiously as he could.

He’d seen brief glances of Davis, Grayson and Collins during their journey here, but nothing too obvious. He could see them again now as they waited in line, but they didn’t stand out in any way at all; just three more passengers going about their business.

Navarone took a nervous gulp as he saw Barrington at the front of the line, the disguised members of the escaped Politburo behind her; he could see, even from where he stood two lines over, the unnatural, tense manner in which some of the politicians held themselves. Surely the guards couldn’t help but notice too?

But Barrington started chatting animatedly to the security personnel in her perfectly accented Mandarin, moving her hand around, motioning towards the women’s league behind her. Navarone couldn’t tell what she was saying, but her manner was authoritative, professional.

Someone else strode over to the group then, and Navarone could see it was a senior officer. What the hell was going on?

But then Barrington burst into her staccato Mandarin again, and after a few moments the senior officer nodded his head and – Navarone could barely believe it – actually smiled. He then gestured to the junior man, who ushered the entire party through the gate en masse, all of them permitted to board the train with no further checks.

Whatever Barrington said had obviously worked, and Navarone hoped he would get to work with her again; she was worth her weight in gold. Scratch that, he thought – she was worth
Chad Davis’s
weight in gold.

Relieved beyond measure, he watched as Barrington led the party through the gates and toward the Maglev train.

Now all he had to do was worry about himself.