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.
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.