Текст книги "Mirage"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Jack Brul
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

It took two weeks to get everything into position. Eddie had returned to Shanghai almost immediately with a small team to keep Kenin’s penthouse under constant observation. The office also served as an address through which they could ship certain items into the country. The advance team also got to work on converting a small panel van they’d bought on the black market. Their final task was to find a suitable place to transfer gear from a submersible. They had lost the Nomad off the coast of Maryland, but they still had her smaller sister, the Discovery 1000. The Oregonwould remain outside of China’s twelve-mile territorial limit, and the illegal gear ferried in clandestinely. They would also use the Disco to get people out of the country as well.

Juan wished he’d have more time to practice with Max’s brilliant piece of engineering, but the ship’s decks were too dangerous, and using it over the water was suicide if something went wrong. He just had to content himself with the little bit of practice he got in the Oregon’s main hold. Keeping the contraption stable was tricky, but he thought he had the hang of it. If something did go wrong during the actual assault, he wasn’t likely to survive.

He piloted the submersible himself. They launched from the moon pool an hour before sunset and dove deep enough that they couldn’t be seen from above. Once it was dark, they could approach the surface. Linda Ross accompanied him. She would take the little four-man mini-sub back to the ship. All the equipment they were bringing was strapped to the top of the sub in a waterproof container.

“Can I ask you something?” Linda said as they started the slow crawl to a rendezvous at an unused pier along the Huangpu River.

“Shoot.” They were at a depth where there was just enough light to see feathers of biologic flotsam streaming by the thick domed canopy. The sub navigated through a lidar system – basically, radar with lasers.

“Why not just lob a missile down on to Kenin while he’s sunning himself? Surely there are times he’s alone.”

“If this was about revenge, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” Juan replied. “But I want to get my hands on his stealth technology, or whatever it was, that made that ship disappear and capsize Dullah and you on the Sakir.”

“I assume you then want to sell it to your and my favorite uncle.”

“I whetted Lang Overholt’s appetite while we were laid up in Bermuda. He said – and I quote—‘Get me that and I’ll hand you a blank check from the Treasury.’ I foresee a number one followed by eight zeros.”

It took Linda a second to imagine the figure. “A hundred million. My my.”

“We just got them back their stolen billion. I think they can afford it. Though Lang’s going to grit his teeth handing it over.” Juan smiled at the thought. His old mentor was known as both a brilliant strategist but also the biggest miser in Washington, D.C.

From time to time, they would rise close enough to the surface to get updated GPS signals to fine-tune the navigation plot. They were fighting the Yangtze’s current, so the going was slow. Because Shanghai is the busiest container port in the world, an unimaginable amount of ship traffic thundered overhead. In the submersible the hiss of steel through water and the chop of propeller blades was an industrial symphony. It dimmed little when they made the turn to start following the Huangpu River that bisected the megalopolis.

They stayed close to the middle of the river. Juan knew on either side of them were mile upon mile of commercial docks. This was a city of industry, and its rivers were its lifeblood. When they passed the Pudong District, they were at a depth of forty feet but could still see the artificial neon glow of the numerous buildings cutting through the water. Twenty minutes later, they drifted toward their rendezvous. The site was in the process of renewal. A cement plant had once stood on a piece of real estate that now was prime for residential development. The towers that were to replace it would be home to five thousand people.

Now the plant had been demolished, but the quay where raw materials had once been imported still stood. Juan had one of their encrypted walkie-talkies. “The Merman is here.”

“About time, Merman,” Eddie replied. “For a while there, I thought you’d come to your senses and called the whole thing off.”

Juan surfaced the mini-sub in the shadow of the quay and quickly saw that he could slip it between the dock and a partially sunken barge. They would be invisible. Eddie was parked in a Chinese knockoff of a Toyota van. A fine rain was falling, blurring the lights of the city. Juan unstrapped himself, gave Linda’s shoulder a squeeze, and made his way to the hatch.

“Take care,” Linda said.

“See you soon.”

Eddie had already released the straps holding the cargo pod to the sub’s upper deck, and, together, he and Cabrillo lifted it into the van’s rear cargo box. The pod itself wasn’t much larger than those seen atop cars, and it weighed less than a hundred pounds.

Once they were clear, bubbles boiled around the Disco submersible and it soon plunged back into its natural element. Linda would be traveling with both tide and current, so she’d be back aboard the Oregonin half the time it took to get here. Eddie drove the truck to a commercial parking lot that was less than two miles from Kenin’s tower fortress. They spent the next hour examining the items they had smuggled into China, making certain nothing had been damaged. Juan was trusting his life to this gear, so he was thorough and methodical.

It was too late to find a taxi so they walked back to the rented office that overlooked Kenin’s penthouse retreat. MacD Lawless was watching the darkened terrace through the powerful camera lens. Mike Trono was stretched out asleep in the adjoining office. Cabrillo let him be and wrapped a sleeping bag around himself and curled up on the carpet. He was asleep in moments.

Next morning, the rain had intensified, and the forecast said it would continue for at least another day. The men remained holed up in the office. Eddie was reduced to the role of errand boy, going out to get their meals. They maintained the overwatch of the rooftop terrace because there wasn’t much else to do. All of them had been on such stakeouts before and each had his own way to combat the boredom.

Thirty hours after sneaking into the country, Juan was with Eddie in the truck. The weather had broken. Seng was behind the wheel while the Chairman rode in the cargo bed. He was strapped in and ready to go. The roof panels had been cut and hinges attached so he could open them with the pull on a length of rope. They just needed to wait for Kenin.

Eddie found a parking space near where he’d spent part of a night watching the building’s back door. He had to remain with the vehicle in case a cop wanted him to move. MacD was in position farther down the street ready for the diversion while Mike was up in the office with a radio to tell them when Kenin went out to enjoy the sunshine after so many days confined indoors.

The guards had done their dawn sweep, and at nine o’clock repeated it because the girl was coming out to swim. Mike relayed this information to the others using a predetermined series of clicks on their walkie-talkies. Not knowing the level of government monitoring made them prudently circumspect.

Juan heard two clicks from his radio handset. Kenin had made his appearance. Juan’s stomach knotted. Minutes to go. He tightened his grip. He wouldn’t open the roof panels until he heard that final single click in case anyone in the surrounding buildings looked down and became curious enough about an open-topped van to call the police.

He had to wait until Kenin was seated poolside. One guard would be standing outside the little pavilion that housed the elevator. But the real trigger moment would come when Mike saw the elevator guard switch frequencies on his radio and check in with the guards down in the penthouse suite. He did it every five minutes. A simple “All’s well.” Once he gave that, Juan had just those five min—

Click.

Cabrillo yanked on the rope, and the two precut sections of roof hinged downward, flooding the interior of the van in light. The truck shifted slightly as Eddie jumped clear and started making his way to another vehicle they had stashed nearby.

Down the street, MacD set the paper bag he’d been carrying in the space between two parked cars and casually blended back into the throngs of people on the sidewalks. After a ten-second delay Cabrillo knew was coming, the contents of the bag started to erupt.

It had been filled with tiny firecrackers. Ironically, they had smuggled them in because they couldn’t guarantee the quality of local fireworks from the nation that invented them. They lit off like echoing popcorn. Those people nearest the smoking eruption of tiny explosions stepped back smartly while nearly every other pedestrian edged forward to see what was happening. For half a block, all eyes were on the sparking and popping bag. No one paid the slightest attention to the van.

They never saw what emerged from the top.

The technology had been around since the 1960s. Max had found the design specs on the Internet. The only issue had been finding sufficiently pure hydrogen peroxide to fuel the contraption.

Cabrillo had spent the morning strapped to a jetpack. Now, with the crowded street distracted by the continuous string of firecrackers going off, he toggled the switch that caused the fuel to react with a silver catalyst and expand in an exothermic reaction that blew superhot gas through the pack’s twin jet nozzles. The sound was like that of steam escaping from a loose fitting, but the exhaust was invisible.

Juan’s first attempts at using the jetpack tethered down in the Oregon’s hold had been disasters. Seconds after lifting free of the deck, he would begin tumbling in midair, and had it not been for the ropes supporting him, he would have killed himself a dozen times over. But then came the eureka moment when he intuitively understood the dynamics of this kind of flying and he could keep erect and stable until the tanks ran dry and he would alight onto his feet with the grace of an eagle returning to its aerie.

Max had done the calculations, and Cabrillo trusted no man more than Hanley, but as he lifted out of the truck’s cargo bed he knew he could be dead in thirty seconds. That’s all the time he had to soar four hundred twenty feet into the air and land precisely on the flat-roofed elevator housing. If he didn’t make it, he’d be just shy of terminal velocity when he augered into the pavement.

Cabrillo came out of the truck with the majestic slow rise of a Saturn rocket, the weight of thrust tightening the straps between his legs and across his back. He wasn’t going to bother with a helmet, but Max convinced him to wear it after mounting a camera so the Oregoncould watch his progress as he climbed higher and higher. The world shrank beneath his feet, and he could tell that his launch had gone unnoticed as they’d planned.

There was nothing to be done about people in surrounding buildings seeing him. He could only hope they saw it as some sort of publicity stunt. Ten seconds into the flight, the top of the building looked no closer in the helmet’s monocular display, and he’d burned half his fuel.

But as the hydrogen peroxide jetted through the exhaust nozzles, the weight dropped and his speed increased. His acceleration was geometric, and quite quickly his target appeared to be within reach. The countdown display calculating thrust time showed he had eight seconds of fuel, and he had only a dozen floors to go. More and more of the city opened to him the higher he rose along the skyscraper’s sheer glass wall, but he took no heed. He concentrated on keeping his body still and his movement to a minimum. That was the secret of flying the turbo-vacuum, as Max called it. Stay nice and steady and keep corrective gestures small. He wavered only slightly as he shot higher and higher and knew that if he survived this, it would be an exhilaration he would never forget.

Four seconds left and he passed the thirty-ninth floor. He eased ever so slightly off the throttle control, slowing his assent. He didn’t want to fly higher than absolutely necessary.

He cleared the last floor with a second of fuel remaining, then realized he still had to get above the glass wall that encircled the top of the building. He didn’t remember if Max had included this final barrier in his calculations.

There was nothing he could do. He leaned in to launch himself at the wall and managed to clear it by kicking his legs forward. This threw off his aerodynamics, but it didn’t matter. The last of the peroxide fuel spewed from the pack, and Cabrillo fell two feet onto the top of the elevator housing. He managed to land on his knees and not hurt himself thanks to pads built into the thermal protective chaps he’d worn.

He slapped the quick release for the belt and shucked out of the jetpack like it was a cape. Empty, it weighed less than forty pounds. He was on his feet a second later, an FN Five-seveN pistol in hand. It was fitted with a silencer and an extended magazine containing thirty rounds, plus the one already in the chamber.

The guard stationed at the elevator had heard something landing atop the building and was slowly walking backward away from the structure to get a better look. His pistol was only partway up. Juan got the drop on him. The high velocity and small size of the FN’s rounds put the man down.

The Chairman took off the helmet and thermal chaps and jumped the eight feet to the terrace floor. He was closer to the southeast side of the building, so he took off into the artificial jungle. Cabrillo moved quickly, his veins buzzing with adrenaline. His senses were heightened to the point that he could hear traffic down on the streets even over the glass barrier. The second guard was the sniper, and Cabrillo saw him as he was scoping a high-rise about five blocks away. The way he held motionless and kept the weapon on one spot told Juan that this guy wasn’t as professional as the others. The building he was looking at had balconies and he’d doubtlessly spotted one with a sunbather on it.

He died getting an eyeful.

Cabrillo still had three minutes before the security team downstairs was alerted that something was wrong. He should take out the third guard now, but he was close to what they had identified as the air intake for the penthouse’s ventilation system. The mechanism was just an anonymous gray box nestled among the trees. Juan bent to it, unclamping a side panel that gave access to the sophisticated filtration system. He pulled the racks of molecular filters until the air circulating downstairs was the same choking smog the rest of Shanghai’s citizens polluted their lungs with every day. Next came the pony bottle of gas. It was a knockout gas similar to the one the Russian Spetsnaz had used to retake a Moscow theater back in 2002, but much safer. Cabrillo opened the tap and let the ventilation fans draw the gas into the suite and distribute it to every nook and cranny.

Then he went hunting for the third guard.

Mike Trono had said the man was on the western side of the building. But that intel was four minutes old, and these were roving guards. He went west anyway, keeping off the paths and in the planted beds as much as he could. He avoided the swimming pool area entirely. If Kenin got a glimpse of someone slinking around his little urban oasis, he’d bolt instantly. The man had the instincts of a wharf rat and three times the cunning.

Juan found a spot where he could look down the entire western edge of the building but couldn’t see his mark. He moved on, careful to disturb nothing. The man gave himself away with a sneeze. He was less than ten feet from Juan, hidden by a wall of ferns. Juan was about to take his shot when he heard Kenin’s voice and the girl’s reply. His hunt had drifted closer to the pool than he’d realized.

He waited. The guard did the last thing Juan expected. He came through the wall of ferns rather than stick to the path. Even silenced, the Five-SeveN made enough noise to carry to the pool. An assault rifle barrel parted the foliage. Cabrillo grabbed it, yanking the guard off balance even before he’d emerged from the artificial jungle. As the man’s head came into view, Juan clubbed him with the butt of his pistol, and again as he slowed the unconscious man’s fall to the deck. He checked for a pulse. It was there but weak. He would live.

The gas he’d released would reach maximum saturation in just a few minutes more. There was no use in delaying. He moved to the nearby path and slowly stepped out from the forest and onto the teak pool surround. The girl saw him first and screamed. Kenin looked up from his computer and startled. His sanctum had been breached.

“Hands up, now,” Juan ordered in Russian, and repeated the phrase in Chinese as Eddie had taught him. He gave them a half second to comply before shooting the pitcher of iced tea on the table between their chairs. Kenin’s nubile companion yelped again, but this time both of them raised their hands.

“Tell her to get into the pool and stay there,” Juan said, still speaking Russian.

The Chinese girl must have understood the language because she rose from her chaise and jumped awkwardly into the azure water, her eyes like saucers and her pretty face ashen with fear.

Kenin regained some of his lost composure, his eyes hardened, and though his hands were still up, they were no longer comically stretched to their limit as they’d been seconds earlier. He demanded with hauteur, “Who are you?”

“The best man at Yuri Borodin’s wedding. And right now I am begging you to give me an excuse to put a bullet between your eyes.”

Understanding dawned on the rogue admiral. “You’re the Chairman. You are Juan Cabrillo.”

Juan saw motion out of the corner of his eye and reacted on pure instinct. He triggered off a half dozen rounds so fast, it was as though the FN were an automatic weapon. He glanced left and saw Kenin’s butler stagger out from behind a big rubber tree. Five of the six shots had hit him center mass, blood stained his white jacket. A MAC-10 machine pistol fell from his nerveless fingers as he pitched face-first onto the tile decking.

Kenin used the momentary distraction and took off running for the elevator. He had maybe a seconds-long head start and was closer to his destination by twenty feet. Juan couldn’t afford to shoot him in the back, so he took off after the Russian. He was twenty years younger than Kenin, but the admiral ran with the drive of a cornered animal. He knew his life was on the line and put on a burst of speed he probably hadn’t thought he was capable of.

Cabrillo still closed the gap. Kenin wore open-toed moccasins under his linen slacks and they slapped with each stride. Juan was readying himself to tackle Kenin from behind when the Russian stopped ten feet shy of the elevator vestibule, turned, and threw the punch he’d trained his entire life to throw.

Juan too had stopped short and reared back slightly but still took the most brutal punch he’d ever felt. Kenin knew his opponent was going down, though he hadn’t yet fallen. Kenin had broken his wrist throwing that punch, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was about to escape. It didn’t register that the man who had somehow breached his security swung the big pistol up just enough that when he triggered off a round, it took off the Russian’s pinkie finger at the first knuckle.

Kenin clutched at his bloody hand when this newfound and sharper pain exploded over the pain of his cracked forearm. Blood sprayed the wall behind him while the severed digit landed in a flower bed to their right.

“Next one’s in your heart,” Juan snarled. He was still woozy from the hit but recovering fast. He waved the gun to indicate he wanted Kenin to return to the pool.

The girl remained in the shallow end, clutching the edge, leaving only her dark eyes showing.

Cabrillo tossed a towel to Kenin to staunch the bleeding and closed up the Russian’s laptop. He also pocketed a pair of cell phones from the table where Kenin had been sitting. Juan found another in the girl’s wicker bag. There would be no useful intel on it, so, with an apologetic shrug to the girl, he flipped her phone into the water.

“Let’s go,” Juan ordered. He and Kenin returned to the elevator. As a precaution against being overcome by the gas he’d earlier dispensed, Juan pulled a pair of filter masks from his equipment pouch and fitted one over his nose and mouth and threw the other to the Russian.

The elevator doors were open.

“Sit in the corner on your hands.” He waited to push the button to the thirty-ninth floor until Kenin was in the correct position.

Juan had him stay there for most of the trip, getting him to his feet just as the elevator car slowed. Cabrillo pulled him up by his injured right arm. Kenin sucked in air through his teeth from the pain.

The elevator dinged open. The Chairman studied the room beyond Kenin’s shoulder, the barrel of his FN Five-seveN pushed into the Russian’s spine. There were three guards dressed in matching uniforms. These were tier two protection, not the elites who had been upstairs. Two of them were huddled over a chessboard while the third had his feet on his desk and his nose buried in a magazine. Beyond them were plate-glass windows and the beautiful cityscape.

This floor must have been ventilated with the rest of the tower because these men were conscious. Juan pulled off his mask and bellowed in Russian, “On your feet!”

The three men turned and saw their boss and assumed he had issued the order. They leapt guiltily and stood at attention. It was only then that Juan revealed himself. One man stupidly reached for his holstered pistol. Cabrillo couldn’t afford to take chances now and put two in the overzealous guard’s head.

The remaining guards threw their hands into the air and started begging for their lives. Juan had them give their pistols the old two-fingered toss and then ordered them to cuff each other to the desk with the plastic zip ties they carried.

He used one of the ties to secure his prisoner’s hands as well.

Cabrillo was just pushing Kenin toward the door that would lead them out of this office when all hell broke loose. The door exploded off its hinges, and Chinese men in uniforms, like the one Eddie had described seeing in the lobby, came pouring through. They were armed but also very poorly trained, for when they saw Juan’s pistol, they started firing like madmen. The windows behind Juan cascaded earthward after being ripped to shards by countless bullets. Kenin took a barrage of shots, his body jerked back by the impact. He lurched drunkenly as Juan dropped low. Kenin rolled over Cabrillo’s back as the momentum thrust him through the gaping window frame. They were forty stories above the street, and Juan just managed to see the shock and rage in Kenin’s eyes before gravity pulled him from view.

Yuri would have loved the irony that the evil and malignant man who had ordered his arrest had died at the hands of his own inept guards. This wasn’t exactly the revenge Juan had envisioned, but it was satisfying all the same.

Cabrillo returned fire. He still had more than twenty rounds in the Five-seveN, and he laid down a covering barrage that let him retreat to the elevator. He hit the button and changed out the spent magazine. This new one was his only spare. He could hear bullets impacting the outer door as he was lifted clear. The laptop had been hit in a corner, but it looked like nothing vital had been destroyed.

The guards who’d rushed in must have been stationed outside the main elevators on thirty-nine. They were the cannon fodder should anyone assault the floor via the building’s main elevator. One of the guards in the inner office must have had a way to signal them and had done so without Juan realizing it.

Juan resettled his mask and rode up one level. The door opened to a utilitarian space. The luxury apartment would be upstairs. This area was for the guards and staff. A small side table was against the wall opposite the elevator. Juan dragged it over so it prevented the doors from closing to keep the men downstairs from using it. They wouldn’t have access to this floor via the emergency stairs, but they would have them guarded so no one could come down. Juan was, essentially, trapped.

But had he been Pytor Kenin, he would have a third way, a secret way, out of the penthouse. He searched quickly. He found a few more guards and staff members unconscious in their rooms. And then he found the escape shaft he was sure Kenin would have installed. It was in a specially made phone-booth-sized room. The ceiling was open so he could see into the top floor of the penthouse. Looking down, he saw nothing but a black abyss.

But right in front of him was a fabric escape tube with an inner elastic tube that would allow him to control his descent. Juan climbed into the constricting conduit, feeling a little like he was working his way through a whale’s intestines. He wriggled and wormed his way down, not knowing how far this extended. He finally saw flashes of light down below his feet and, moments later, flopped out of the escape tube into a room with windows lining one wall.

Kenin had thought of everything. On the floor next to the door was a knapsack that would be his go bag, with essentials like spare IDs, cash, and weapons. If Kenin had extra time when fleeing his penthouse above, there were different changes of clothes on a wardrobe rack – a tailored suit, casual clothes, and uniforms for a janitor, a delivery driver, or a security guard.

Juan helped himself to a fresh shirt that was a little too big but was close enough. He stripped off any tactical gear he still wore. His pants were slightly dirty, but not so bad that anyone would take much notice. He went to the door and cautiously opened it. Beyond was a hallway like any other. It could be in an office building in any city on the planet. Reassuringly banal. On the door he could see that Kenin’s escape chute had dumped him out in room 3208. He’d descended almost ten stories.

He regretted having to leave his pistol behind, so from here on he’d have to talk his way rather than fight his way out of whatever came next.

Carrying Kenin’s laptop, he stepped from the office and let the door close behind him. He walked past several closed office doors and politely nodded to the one person he saw, a middle-aged man who returned the nod and didn’t seem suspicious. Where Kenin had punched him hadn’t starting bruising yet. In an hour the spot would be a hideous shade of puce/black.

He found the elevator and had to wait less than thirty seconds. There were a few people on it when the doors whispered open. Juan got on, turned to face front like everyone else, and waited. There came a chime, and the doors closed. A few stops later, the elevator opened in the lobby. Everything appeared normal at first. Then he saw some of the security team huddled together at their station. They seemed agitated and unsure as they listened to a walkie-talkie, presumably from the men up on thirty-nine. Juan looked away. No need to draw attention. A police car pulled up outside. Cabrillo almost changed direction, but that would have been suspicious. Enough people must have called in about a guy flying up the side of a building that the authorities finally sent a patrol to investigate. He was opposite the two cops in the large revolving door as it rotated on its axis. He was out. They were in. Who knew what would happen when they sorted everything out.

He gave his two-way radio a click to tell Eddie to come. Moments later, their second van appeared around the corner. Eddie read the situation. The Chairman was alone, so there was no need to duck to the curb quickly so they could toss their prisoner in the back. He found a spot farther down the block and waited for Cabrillo to jog up to him.

“Let’s go,” Juan said as soon as the door was closed.

“What happened?”

Eddie had some bottled water on the engine cover between the two seats. Seeing it, Cabrillo felt his throat suddenly dry and tight. He twisted off the cap and drank a half liter in one throw. “Believe it or not, Kenin was shot by his own guards. Everything was going pretty much to plan. I had just neutralized the men at the bottom of his private elevator when the guards tasked with overseeing the building’s main elevators came at us with guns blazing.”

“The Ruskies are going to be bummed,” Eddie observed.

“When I first got in touch with my guy in the Kremlin and told him I had a bead on Kenin, I got the impression that Moscow will be just as happy with this outcome. Saves them the hassle of admitting what he’d done, putting on a show trial, and shooting him themselves.” Juan held up the laptop. “I just hope Murph and Stoney can get something valuable off this thing so this whole op will be worth it.”

“If it’s on there, they’ll get it.” They drove in silence for a few minutes. Eddie finally asked the burning question. “How was it?”

“How was what?” Juan replied.

“Come on. It must have been amazing.”

The Chairman grinned. “Amazing doesn’t come close. I used to think skydiving was the closest I could ever come to being able to fly. It’s nothing compared to the ride I just had. I think I want Max to build me another jetpack for Christmas.”

They cruised around until sunset and then made their way to the abandoned cement factory. Eddie, MacD, and Mike were all in the country legally and would fly out the next morning, maintaining their covers in case they might ever need them again. Since Juan had snuck into China, this time he would have to slink out too. Eddie kept Juan company until the Discovery 1000 rose in the shadow of the pier. Cabrillo leapt onto the mini-sub’s back and waited for the hatch to open. Hanley himself was piloting the submersible.