Lethal Circuit (10 page)

“Is there a good reason we’re going to that airport?”

“Staying alive is good, right?”

Michael didn’t like where this was going. But he figured he’d like being perforated by bullet holes less. So he made a choice. A choice that would have seemed insane just a short while ago. “Open your window, pull back your seat, and button up your Daisy Duke’s.”

“Michael,” Kate said calmly. “I want you to stop the car and let me drive.”

“It’s not driving when your wheels leave the ground.”

Michael stomped on it and the tiny blue car gave what little it had left. Michael knew that what he was about to do was not without risk. For one thing, the drainage ditch was no rut in the road. It was at least forty feet across. For another, the gravel ramp ran at a rough forty-five degree angle to the fence. It was pointing in the right direction to cross the bend in the ditch, but it was a stretch to think the little car would make it up the ramp and over the chain link. Plus, it wasn’t like Evel Knievel was his uncle. Michael knew he could drive. But he had no idea if he could fly.

 
Short of surrendering though, Michael didn’t see a lot of options. So he hit it, hammering the gravel ramp at as oblique an angle as seemed prudent. The Mini’s bumper hit first plowing through the gravel like an upended dustbin before the front wheels gained traction and dug into the dirt. It was all momentum from there. Michael would have liked to think it had something to do with skill, but at that point they were a projectile. A projectile in need of a target.

Michael wasn’t sure exactly when they left the ramp behind them. He did notice that they had a good view of the airfield from up there. And then an eerie calm replaced the sound of rubber on gravel. They were airborne. But the weightless sensation didn’t last long. It was a second, maybe more, before Michael saw the glint of barbed wire in front of him. He thought they were going to clear it. He hoped that they were going to clear it. He prayed as much. But then he heard the tug of barbed wire on the grill work as it took hold of the little car, pulling her back to Earth. And WHAM! A fraction of a second later they were plowing through the chain link as it levered downward like a too stiff shock absorber guiding them to terra firma.

The little Mini crumpled exactly where she was supposed to, front end flattening as they coughed over what was left of the fence. It was the airbags that were harder to deal with. Fortunately both he and Kate had pulled their seats way back, minimizing the impact. Michael glanced backward, but despite their brief flight there had been no discernible change in their circumstances. The headlights were still coming. Michael hit the gas, even though he could see nothing but the airbag, but the Mini’s rear wheels seemed to be caught up in the mess of chain link and barbed wire. He glanced at Kate.

“You okay?”

“Never better.” She tossed the hair from her face and pulled out a laser pointer which she fired at the runway in three short bursts. A hundred yards away in what had been blackness, a dim glow emanated from the cockpit of an aircraft which moved slowly toward them. “Now help me out with this thing.”

Her door wouldn’t open so Kate climbed out the Mini’s broad open window, Michael following through his. They took hold of the capsule from the rear hatch. It appeared undamaged, but the airfield was already awash in yellow light, the racing engines of their pursuers reverberating off the plain. Fortunately, Michael now saw Kate’s plan. The aircraft moving toward them was an extended frame Cessna 180, its large cargo door open. It was being towed by an air truck that disengaged its hitch as it approached. The Cessna’s single prop started with a snort. Michael could hear the screeching of car brakes behind them.

“Halt!” a man cried out.

Michael might have been a novice in the world of espionage, but it was obvious that now was not the time to concede their escape. The taxiway was thirty feet off, the plane almost upon them. Michael instinctively ducked as a bullet flew past. They ran the last few strides, the capsule strung between them. As the Cessna crawled by, mere feet away, Michael and Kate heaved the capsule into the open door, diving onto the hard floor behind it.

•
 
•
 
•

T
WENTY
-
FIVE
FEET
AWAY
, Huang continued to fire his weapon at the American. The Cessna was picking up speed now, he and his men just barely over the breach in the fence. The American was getting away, but Huang was undaunted. The tow vehicle would do nicely for his purposes. As the tow vehicle turned about, fresh from releasing the small aircraft, Huang strode toward it, gun in hand. His men continued to fire at the plane, the driver of the tow vehicle stopping and raising his hands in surrender. Huang pushed the driver aside and took the wheel of the open vehicle, popping its tired clutch and aiming it for the Cessna as it turned onto the runway.

Huang clicked his seat belt on, recognizing that what he had to do wouldn’t be pretty, but it would be effective. He only hoped his men had the sense to stop firing when they saw him coming. Speeding across the runway toward the Cessna, Huang zeroed in on the plane with the heavy tow vehicle. Certain that the only way to end things was to keep going, he broadsided the light plane squarely behind the wing. The blow was enough to send the plane cartwheeling up onto its far wing. The Cessna did one complete rotation, its propeller digging into the earth. It then continued around, vaulting upwards in a second cartwheel until finally, its kinetic energy spent, it hung there for a long moment, wing tip reaching for the sky, before crashing back down to Earth.

Huang jumped off the tow vehicle, his pistol at the ready. All was quiet now, the plane’s engine silent as he advanced cautiously ahead. The left wing of the aircraft was twisted off at an unnatural angle. The American would be in rough shape, but he would be alive. Huang covered the area cautiously, his men picking up the cue and advancing behind him. Huang saw the pilot, unconscious, still strapped into his seat. Huang continued to sweep the aircraft with his pistol. He knew the American would be in the cargo area, possibly unconscious and most definitely injured. And he knew that an injured, cornered animal was the most dangerous of all. So when Huang finally swept his pistol into the open cargo area, he was prepared for a fight. What he wasn’t prepared for was what he found — namely nothing at all. The fuselage was still essentially intact, but the American, his companion, and the object that they had been carrying were nowhere to be seen. Huang carefully examined the cargo bay, but wherever the American was, he wasn’t there. He was gone.

15

JET PROPULSION LABORATORIES, CALIFORNIA

M
OBI
HADN
’
T
KNOWN
what to expect when he left his post in JPL’s main control room to take the short flight of steps up to the Director’s office
—
a reprimand maybe for clocking in late that evening, perhaps a complaint about the chicken, maybe even some gentle ribbing about his alma mater, Caltech, from Deputy Director Alvarez, a dyed-in-the-wool MIT grad. What he didn’t expect was an audience with what appeared to be a highly decorated Air Force Colonel. After all, JPL was a civilian institution. The closest Mobi had gotten to the military was a recruitment commercial, the kind with swooping jets and lots of talk about teamwork. The confusion must have been readily apparent in Mobi’s eye because Alvarez quickly filled him in.
 

“Colonel Rand is the ranking official from Air Force Space Command. He’s been sent here because he requires our help on a project.”

“Good evening,” Mobi searched for the correct salutation, “Colonel.”

“Mr. Stearn.”

Mobi looked like he was about to say something, but then stopped.

“Question?” Rand asked.

“It’s nothing,” Mobi said.

“I’d say it’s something, or you wouldn’t be standing there with you mouth half open.”

“I have a good memory, sir, and I seem to remember you. Are you the same Colonel Rand who was detained by the Chinese government on Hainan Island after your spy plane was escorted down?”

“I was a major back then, but yes, that’s me.”

“Wow. Didn’t they hold you for like five days?”

“Six if you include the night I got there.”

“What was that like?”

“A major international incident,” Rand said. “I really can’t comment beyond that.”

Mobi looked like he was about to say something else but stopped himself, instead staring at the chevrons on Rand’s uniform.

“You want to discuss fashion now?”

“No sir.”

“Spit it out.”

“Not to fly my freak flag too high, Colonel, but we fly civilian missions here.”

Alvarez took control of the situation. “So we do,” she said. “But lest you forget, the lab also receives a significant portion of its funding from the Department of Defense, and as such we’ve always remained open to their needs, just as they’ve been open to ours.” Alvarez was using her soft voice, and though she was in no way a hard edged woman, Mobi knew that soft voice meant one thing: that there were outsiders in their midst and he’d better listen. “Colonel Rand, would you like to take it from here?”

Rand didn’t mince his words. “Can I assume Mr. Stearn has security clearance?”

“Class Two Civilian,” Alvarez said.

“Then let’s get to it. Being in your line of work you no doubt know that the Germans had a number of unique aircraft in development during Word War II.”

“Sure, the V2 rocket, the Heinkel 178 jet, any number of the Horten brothers’ designs,” Mobi said.

“So you’re aware that the V2 rocket was the predecessor to every ICBM on the planet. You know the Heinkel 178 was the world’s first jet aircraft. What do you know about the Hortens?”

“I’m a communication engineer, not an aircraft historian.”

“I didn’t ask you what you did for living.”

Mobi cast a glance at Alvarez. Her look told him to play nice. “The Horten Ho 2-29 was the world’s first stealth aircraft. The Horten 18, a larger version of the 2-29, was a long range bomber. The Nazis probably would have won the war if they’d been able to get either one of them into production in time.”

“Good. Now what you might not know is that the Germans are also said to have invented a number of lesser known technologies.”

Mobi was quiet for a long moment. “You’re talking about the 21.”

“So you do know something.”

“The Horten 21 was built on the 2-29’s basic design. It was larger with an aluminum skin, but the big difference was the power source. It was supposed to contain a working low energy nuclear reactor — the holy grail of nuclear design — cold fusion.”

“That’s right. Cold fusion. Anything else you’d like to add, Mr. Stearn?”

“Yeah. Nobody’s ever been able to confirm the existence of the 21. And not because they didn’t try. Project Paperclip was launched by the OSS after the war to, among other things, get to the bottom of what exactly the Nazis might have done with the prototypes. They came up with nothing. Nada. As far as the official record stands, the Horten 21 was never built.”

“It’s a good analysis, but not quite accurate,” Rand said.

“What did I miss?”

Rand's lips curled into a crooked smile. But there was nothing nice about it. It was a smile designed to prove a point. “You missed the little detail about one of these Nazi birds being found. Approximately five years ago, a heavily corroded Horten 21 was pulled from a Chinese rice paddy. By the time officials got to it, the locals had melted most of it down for scrap metal, but the reactor and communications systems were still intact.”

Mobi let out a slow breath. “I knew it. You guys have got one, don’t you? Where is it? Nellis? Edwards?”

“No. In spite of our best efforts, we don’t have a 21, Mr. Stearn.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“They have one. An unmanned Chinese satellite incorporating what our experts believe to be a working model of the Horten’s cold fusion reactor was launched into orbit twenty-six hours ago.”

Unable to contain himself, Mobi jumped up from his chair. “Awesome. What can I say? This is just awesome.”

“It’s not entirely awesome, Mr. Stearn.”

“Which part? The part about cold fusion being the answer to the world’s energy crisis? The part about not having to burn oil anymore? Or the part about no nasty radioactive waste like you get out of nuclear fission?” Mobi threw his hands into the air. “Which part of this equation could not possibly be awesome?”

“The part about the Chinese having lost control of their satellite,” Alvarez said.

“Lost control?” Mobi asked, “As in dead in the air?”

This time Rand made no effort to disguise his smug superiority. “As in the Chinese bird is on a collision course with Earth. Unless we can do something about it, your totally awesome cold fusion reactor is about to blow a whole lot of people all the way to hell.”

16

O
NE
DAY
M
ICHAEL
got home from school early. He must have been in the fifth or sixth grade. His dad had just gotten back from one of his trips and he had a gift for him. It was a little woven bamboo tube called a Chinese Finger Puzzle. The trick was, you stuck a finger into either end of the little woven tube and you pulled. The tube grabbed your fingers and wouldn’t let go. The more you pulled, the tighter it grabbed. The only way to get your fingers out was to go in the opposite direction. To push them together so that the little tube squished back down and widened, finally letting your fingers out. Michael played with the finger puzzle for weeks after that until finally it broke. It was fun while it lasted though. And it taught Michael an important lesson. Sometimes to move forward, you needed to take a step back.