He had pulled himself onto the shore soon after and headed off into the trees, all too aware that — as a Caucasian — he would stand out wherever he went in Beijing. There might have been thousands of foreigners in the city, but it was a far cry from the eight million Chinese who lived here. His physical appearance would make him a target wherever he went.
But he accepted that — at this stage — there was nothing very much he could do about that, and so decided to rely on the fact that not enough time had passed since this whole thing started for the vast majority of the Beijing population to know anything about it.
He therefore had a window of opportunity — before every citizen in the area was ordered to report the movements of Westerners — to make good his escape.
His plan consisted of finding an entryway into the sewer system; if unobserved, he might still be able to link up with the rest of Force One and extract with them. But he knew this would put the secondary mission at risk, and so decided there and then not to link up with them; he would make his own way back.
He could still use the sewers though, and so broke out of the tree-line and entered the ancient alleyways of the Houhai district, its crisscrossed maze of small alleys between traditional courtyard houses a small reminder of what Beijing had used to look like — before the communist love of grey concrete had made its unfortunate presence felt.
He walked casually now, careful not to seem out of place; just a tourist taking in the sights of the old city. At least his soaking wet clothes could easily be accounted for by the rain.
On the sparsely populated streets — most people having retreated inside until the worst of the storm was over — he noticed that many people carried umbrellas, others using newspaper as a makeshift barrier.
Cole followed suit, buying a paper from a street vendor and putting it up over his head; not only would it make him blend in better, it would also mask his identity from aerial surveillance.
His vision continually swept the area, ever vigilant against the security forces who might even now be searching for him; the boat would have been found by now, and there was no way they would accept that he had simply drowned.
As he wove in and out of the quaint, stone alleyways, passing street vendors and washing lines, food carts and playing children, he also scanned the ground for manhole covers, or any indication that there was some way of accessing the sewer system.
It would have been an impossible task to locate and memorize every entrance to the sewer network, and back in America, Cole had just learned the locations of several major entry points.
He was headed toward the nearest of these points, within the basement of the Fushan Temple, sandwiched between the small museum of Prince Kung’s Mansion and the campus of Beijing Normal University North. But if he found another way in while making his way there, he would definitely take it.
Cole heard sirens blaring in the background, but they came and went; none were headed his way, not yet at least.
He was being eyed with suspicion by the locals, but no more than was normal in Beijing; the people here had a tendency to stare, and Cole didn’t know if he was being recognized or not. But nobody made any move toward him, and nobody tried to stop him. He was just another crazy tourist trying to find his way back to his hotel in the storm.
He was halfway to Fushan Temple when he saw the grate, hidden down a small alleyway to the east, empty except for a single washing line and a hastily abandoned football.
Checking carefully around him, he decided that nobody was paying attention and casually turned the corner into the alleyway.
He increased his pace now, anxious to get underground before he was seen.
He got to the grate quickly, hands going down, pulling up on the ancient, rusted metal.
At first the grate barely moved at all, but after a fourth gut-wrenching heave, it slipped out of its place and came partially up from the stone alley floor.
He breathed deeply, knowing that the next heave would do it, steeling himself for the effort.
But he was stopped in his tracks by the police whistle being blasted at the end of the alleyway, and turned to look, watching in horror as a pair of municipal policemen came charging towards him, guns drawn as their colleague continued to whistle for immediate back-up.
Cole knew that the boat must have been found, they must have figured he was headed into the mazelike streets of Houhai and sent in patrols to scour the area. The fact that the man wasn’t using a radio told Cole that such long-range communication was unnecessary — back-up was close enough to hear the whistle, and could be here at any moment.
He knew he could never open the grate before the policemen shot him, and so put his hands up in the air in surrender, noting the premature smiles on the faces of the approaching cops.
He let them get close to him, one keeping him covered with a pistol while the other went for his handcuffs.
He waited as they moved ever closer, patiently assessing everything about them.
Just a little closer… a little more…
Cole burst into action, slamming the callused edge of one hand down onto the pistol, chopping it from the man’s grip. As it dropped to the floor, Cole chopped forwards with his other hand, hitting the cop straight in the throat.
The man dropped to the floor, clutching his windpipe, and Cole reached out for the handcuffs held by the other man, using them to pull him forward onto a solid head butt which broke his nose and left him unconscious on the rain-slicked alley floor.
The man with the whistle, aghast at what he had witnessed, was screaming now — orders or curses, Cole couldn’t be sure — and went for his own pistol.
In the blink of an eye, Cole bent at the knees and snatched the first cop’s gun from the floor, aiming and firing from his kneeling position in one smooth, precise movement.
The round hit the cop in the shoulder, spinning him round and dropping him to the floor in a shocked, silent heap.
Cole looked down at the grate, wondering what to do; it was possible he had time to remove the grate and get down there, but if the authorities knew he was in the sewers they would order a full search to be made — something that would potentially jeopardize the other Force One operation.
He moved as soon as he thought, vice-like fingers digging into the rough stone work of the alleyway as he hauled himself upwards, heading for the roof instead.
Using ledges, pointing, breaks and small holes in the wall, Cole climbed fast up the wet, slippery surface, eventually hooking his fingers onto the grey-tiled roof and pulling himself all the way up — just moments before the edge erupted under a hail of gunfire, stone and tile blasted away just inches from his feet by small-arms fire.
Cole wasn’t surprised — despite orders to the contrary, any policeman seeing a fallen colleague would open fire and hang the consequences. His shot might not have killed the cop — like the strike to the other man’s throat, it was aimed carefully, intended to be non-lethal — but the other cops would hardly thank him for his kindness, and their hearts would be filled with revenge. Filled enough to follow him up here?
He wondered about that as he turned and — crouched low to aid his balance — started to move swiftly across the rooftops, the alleys so narrow that he could easily hop from one to another.
If they didn’t follow him up, he could be away from the area very rapidly and — trapped in the maze below — they would be unable to track him.
Only a few precious moments of hope passed after having this thought before the sounds of the renewed whistle blasts from below were completely overwhelmed by a much louder noise from above.