Beyond all Limits (29 page)

9

Liu Yingchau heard the comments over his radio, barely able to decipher what was going on.

He had been angry with himself since watching the American commando exit Beihai Lake in the speedboat, completely at a loss to know how to help the fleeing man.  No matter how good the agent was, the security network that would be heading north with him would be truly inescapable, and – despite his intentions to help the man – there was nothing that Liu could really do about it.

But the reports coming thick and fast through Liu’s communications system hinted that he was perhaps doing better than Liu had any right to hope; first there was the abandoned speedboat – the reason Liu was now hightailing it in a military squad car into the Houhai district – and then the sound of whistles, gun shots, and the garbled radio messages about the man climbing a wall. And then more messages as the helicopters found him on the rooftops.

Liu had assumed that this would be the end of it – the next thing he’d hear would be news of the man’s capture or death. But then – even before he heard the reports on the radio – his attention was drawn upward by the sound of a fast-moving helicopter, and he opened the squad car window and craned his neck out to see it.

And what he saw amazed him – one of the Harbin Z-9s blasting through the rain-filled skies above him, with what appeared to be a man dangling from an open door. It was as insane a sight as any Liu had ever seen, and the screams and shouts he heard over the airwaves soon after just confirmed the unreality of the situation.

But it seemed that the American had killed two of the soldiers onboard the chopper, and the pilot had then taken things into his own hands and was now doing his best to kill the man.

As Liu watched the helicopter accelerate off across Beijing, he already started to calculate his options should the man somehow miraculously survive.

Because it was now becoming a possibility that Liu had to seriously consider.

There were only twenty feet to go until the chopper passed over the curved roof of the performing arts center, and Cole knew he just had to hang on for a few moments longer, just a few short, painful moments . . .

But in those few moments, time seemed to distort, fractions of a second turning to minutes of pain and anguish, until Cole wondered if he could truly hang on long enough to see his plan through to the end, or if his grip would give up too soon, his body plummeting to the lake below, breaking apart when it hit water as hard as concrete.

His mind continued to play tricks on him in those moments, questioning the height of the chopper’s approach, its angle, where his own body truly was in space – too high, too low – and whether instead of clearing the roof, he would instead by dashed against it, legs and pelvis shattered by the impact; or else the entire helicopter itself would hit the structure in a suicide mission by the enraged pilot.

But then those fleeting instants were over, and the helicopter
was
over the roof, still accelerating onwards, and soon the roof would be gone, left far behind, and . . .

Cole released his grip without conscious thought as he let his instincts take over completely, guiding his body, taking advantage of the perfect time, the one and only opportunity he had left.

His body sailed down through the air and he felt the familiar lurch in his stomach as gravity pushed him savagely earthwards, and then the roof was there, right there at this feet, and he buckled at the ankles, the knees, the hips, his body rolling just as he’d been taught in jump school at Fort Bragg all those years before, the same way he had landed after his hundreds of parachute jumps; but this time the landing was on curved metal and glass, and – the breath knocked out of him – he was suddenly tumbling and spinning down the arched surface, falling uncontrollably down the elliptical building.

But then his instinct – hardwired and unassailable – prevailed again, and his hands, still weak from his grip in the helicopter door, had to go to work one more time, grasping out for the raised titanium frame which held the darkened glass in place, fingertips working to gain a hold of the rain-slicked metal.

They grasped, failed, and grasped again; and then again, and then again, his body all the while continuing its inexorable slide down the side of the building; but then his fingers grasped and held and his body finally, mercifully, came to a stop, a third of the way down the curved glass slope.

Cole breathed hard, gasping, almost unable to believe he had finally stopped his fatal descent.

But stop it he had, and now – with the sounds of the other choppers moving in towards him – all he had to do was find some way of getting inside the damned building.

General Wu looked at the monitors which showed the progress of the East China Fleet towards the coast of Japan. The entire battle group was still undetected, still far enough away from the target so that their radar would be ineffective.

But soon, Wu knew, everyone in the entire world would be aware of his plans. Would America intervene?

He hadn’t previously thought so, but today’s events were causing him to reconsider; they had already tried to intervene in his affairs, hadn’t they? At the moment he had no proof, but he felt sure that the dual incidents that had occurred that afternoon – the foiled assassination attempt on his own life, and the destruction of the Hall of Imperial Supremacy and the Politburo within – must have been the work of the Americans. Who else, realistically, could it have been?

Did that indicate that their resolve was greater than he had anticipated? Would they risk the four thousand sailors and aircrew of the USS
Ford
, the tens of thousands of their citizens trapped inside China’s borders, to help their ally?

Wu still couldn’t believe they had the stomach for it; what had happened today was low-key, a covert operation which reflected a last-ditch, desperate attempt on the part of President Abrams to avoid an all-out war. But when that war reared its ugly head – as it would do any day now – Wu was in no doubt that Abrams would back down.

He had leaked enough information to US intelligence sources so that they would have a vague idea of the massive nuclear arsenal Wu had under his command, and he was sure that the psychological profile they had on him would suggest that he would be willing to use that arsenal if pushed.

Which, of course, he was. Why have it otherwise?

The tunnels under the Taihang Mountains were so deep, so well protected, that no military airstrike could have a chance of taking them out. The Americans would know this, just as they would know that China could easily target the pitifully small US stockpile that remained. It was a one-sided affair if ever there was one, and was the major reason for Wu’s unshakeable confidence in attacking Japan.

And attacking Japan was something he had always wanted to do, something he had felt
compelled
to do, something he had fantasized over and dreamed about ever since he’d heard stories as a child of the atrocities visited upon his people by Japan’s imperialist armies. His own grandmother had been brutalized during the 1937 massacre in Nanjing, his grandfather bayoneted to death after being forced to watch her gang raped. His uncle was later beaten to death by Japanese officials in occupied Shanghai, which was when his own parents had fled north to Chengdu. They had hated the Japanese with a hot, burning passion, and had instilled the same vehement hatred in their son.

Now Wu felt close to finally making that nation pay for its atrocities, to finally bring it under Chinese control, to make it yet one more province of the Chinese empire. He would subjugate its people and take over their industrial base, achieving a huge propaganda victory for his new regime while also vastly increasing the wealth of his own nation.

And, he thought with a smile, vastly increasing his own personal wealth in the process.

He thought momentarily of his old friend Kang Xing, Minister of National Defense and – Wu could now admit – perhaps the true mastermind behind recent events. He had certainly seeded the ideas in Wu’s mind, given him the confidence to go through with his plans, made suggestions for an overall strategic direction to follow.

But now Kang was dead, killed by the bomb – or space-based weapons attack, they still didn’t really know – which had destroyed much of the Outer Eastern Palace. His emotions were mixed – the man had proved to be a good friend over the years, and a valuable mentor. But at the end of the day, he knew too much, and if Wu was ever going to step out of Kang’s shadow and become his own man, he would have ultimately had to get rid of his old friend anyway.

He had to admit, in a way the Americans had actually done him a favor, and the thought made him smile.

His head snapped round at the call of one of the officers monitoring the situation with the assassin, a situation that Wu had stopped following when it became clear it was degenerating into chaos; he had instructed the officers to only tell him when it was sorted out, and the man was dead or in custody.

Wu strode over to the excited officer. ‘Has he been captured?’

‘Not yet,’ the officer replied, ‘but we have him trapped. He has managed to get inside the National Center for Performing Arts, but he’s trapped himself. We have air coverage blanketing the area and ground troops moving in right now. There is no chance for him to escape whatsoever.’

‘Good,’ said General Wu as he turned back to monitor the passage of the carrier battle group across the East China Sea, his keen eyes assessing everything. Catching the assassin was important, but he knew that the invasion of Japan was infinitely more so.

Minister of National Defense Kang Xing smiled at the attendant as he accepted his glass of wine, relaxing his body back into the comfortable seats of the Maglev train.

He saw his reflection in the window and thought with amusement that he made quite a passable lady.
Yes
, he thought with a smile,
not bad at all.

He had no idea how – with all international travel routes closed – the Americans were going to get them out of the country, but their performance so far gave him the confidence that they would succeed.

And if they did not? Well then, he and the other members of the Politburo would just be returned to their prison in the Forbidden City. The US commandos would probably be killed, or else captured and tortured in the basement dungeons, but that was hardly Kang’s concern.

He reflected momentarily on the fact that General Wu might arrange for him personally to have a little ‘accident’, though. After all, it was Kang who had guided Wu’s hand throughout the build-up to the coup, and Wu wouldn’t want the competition. While he was still being useful – providing ‘information’ from the Politburo members – he was relatively safe, but he was under no illusions that when Wu had no more use for him, he would go the same way as Tsang Feng.

But Kang hoped it would not get to that stage; the Americans had rescued him and the rest of the Politburo, Chang was rising in everyone’s estimation, and Kang’s own personal plans – just a portion of which related to Wu’s takeover of China – were going exactly as he’d anticipated.

In a way, it didn’t even matter if he was killed now; everything was in place for his ultimate goals to be realized, goals far more grandiose and ambitious than that brutal thug Wu De could even comprehend.

But he wanted to live, to go on to see the fruits of his labors; he had worked so hard for it over the years, he felt he deserved that, at least.

He wanted to see the results of his plans, his machinations, his political maneuverings. Was that too much to ask? He wanted to see what he had created, his ultimate tribute to the history of China, and then he could die in peace, a happy man.

He sipped his wine as the train accelerated along its track, finally breaking free from Beijing now, and wondered deeply about what the next days would bring.

10

Mark Cole crouched down low within the incredibly complex lighting fixtures that hung high above the Theatre Hall, looking down at the scene below him.

His fall down the side of the building had stopped at a point where the glass panels gave way to pure titanium and – after scouring the area for frantic seconds, as the other helicopters moved closer in – he had eventually found a maintenance access point within one of the panels.

The hatch had taken him down a metal ladder leading to an internal roof which the dome was wrapped around, and he had soon found another hatch which led inside and further down.

He had worked his way through a network of ducts and service walkways, until he opened a small door and was immediately greeted by the cacophony of sounds coming from below.

He’d seen that he had found his way into the lighting service catwalk above the Theatre Hall, which had a performance of the fabled Beijing Opera in full flow. He had tried to turn back, but as he left the hall, he’d heard noises, the sounds of other people entering the maintenance access areas.

He didn’t know how they had found him so fast, but doubted that it was the police or military. More likely it was the center’s own security staff, alerted to his presence by the reports from the helicopter crews. Not particularly well trained perhaps, but they would be armed, and given the cramped confines of the roof space, they would have to be very unlucky to miss him.

He therefore turned back to the steel gantry, and started to thread himself through the metal struts, praying that the structure was strong enough to hold his weight, knowing the guards would think twice before following him out there.

He looked out in front of him, marveling at the thousand people sat there in rapt pleasure as they watched the show, completely unaware of the wanted assassin who was crawling across the roof above them.

Directly below him, he saw the retinue of highly trained performers with their painted faces and colorful robes as they acted out the larger-than-life roles of the traditional opera, a vibrant combination of instrumental music, vocal performances, mime, dance and acrobatics.

The high, shrill voice of the young male lead filled the theatre, drifting up to the rafters with haunting beauty, almost caused Cole to pause momentarily; but still he ploughed on, clambering over the metal lighting rig.

But where was he going?

He had to admit to himself that he didn’t know. He realized he was heading to the other side of the hall, but what was the point? More security guards would doubtless be heading that way too, with a much greater knowledge of the building’s layout than he had, and he would be cut off.

So where did that leave him?

He looked down again, knowing that he had to get there somehow, his decision reinforced as he saw a hatch opposite him opening, two men with pistols pushing through, their weapons pointed straight at him.

He looked over his shoulder, saw three more men waiting at the metal gantry, their own pistols also up and aimed.

Pushed into a corner, with nowhere else to go and nothing else left to do, he took hold of the metal strut in front of him, a steel bar which supported three large stage lights below it. He pulled furiously, bouncing his weight up and down on it, forcing it to bend, give way, to give up its grasp on the secondary bar it was attached to.

The Chinese guards whispered harsh warnings at him but Cole ignored them, bouncing harder and harder, until the bar snapped free of its attachment and swung down towards the stage in a pendulum-like arc, still attached at the other end.

Cole could hear the gasps of surprise from the audience, the cries of shock from the actors beneath him, the calls for help, for back-up, from the guards who were now above him.

The bar continued its swing, one of the lights coming loose and crashing to the stage below, the actors barely getting out of the way in time as the strut’s fifteen foot length continued to arc downwards.

Cole let go at the lowest point of its arc, dropping the remaining ten feet to the sprung wooden floor of the stage, his body absorbing the impact as it narrowly missed the smashed stage light next to him.

The light erupted in a shower of sparks, and Cole realized the guards were shooting at him. He dove to the left, the audience screaming now, leaping from their seats, clambering over each other in a desperate panic to leave, the scene turned into one of shocking, violent chaos.

At the same time, the main doors of the theatre burst open and armed soldiers rushed in, automatic rifles up and pointed at the stage; but the swarms of people trying desperately to leave the auditorium overwhelmed them, pushed them back, and Cole took the opportunity and made a dash for the stage exit.

As he moved, he sensed the passage of metal in the air and barely managed to avoid a traditional Chinese broadsword as it sliced towards him, held by a painted actor, the
wusheng
character whose role was always combative.

Cole ducked the blow and struck the man in the gut with a fast kick, knocking the man backwards across the stage, leaping towards the concealed exit door as more shots rained down on him from above, the bullets ripping up the wooden floor behind him.

But he was there, he’d made it, but as he accelerated towards the door it suddenly opened, four more armed men in front of him.

He turned to the other side of the stage, but the guards up above fired again, boxing him in; and then more soldiers appeared from the stage door opposite, and the retinue of armed men struggling to get in from the rear finally managed to break forth into the rapidly-emptying theatre, cutting off his escape completely.

He looked above him, in front of him, and to the sides, ready to make a move towards any opening that presented itself, but eventually, his heart dropping like a stone, he understood the need to accept the inevitable.

He had nowhere left to go.

As the soldiers rushed towards him from all sides, he raised his hands in the air in surrender, a gesture that was ignored as they clubbed him viciously to the floor with the butts of their rifles, laid into him with their fists and booted feet.

As a rifle caught him in his temple, the last thought that went through his mind before he blacked out was how he could turn this tragedy into some sort of opportunity.

And even as he slumped into unconsciousness, his mind knew that there might –
just might
– be a way.