“How?”
Kate placed her fingers under the lip of the capsule and lifted. “Take an end,” she said.
***
Upon determining that the Shenzhen Riviera Condominiums were the source of the encrypted transmission, Captain Huang had had its residents run through the Ministry databases. As he suspected they had come back with a hit: a person of interest by the name Hao Chen. Huang had been an agent in China’s state security agency for long enough to know that its person of interest designation could mean anything from Chen being a potential dissident to a successful capitalist to an outright spy. That information would be shared on a priority basis. Regardless, what was relevant now was that Chen was a reasonable starting point in his search for the American.
It was for this reason that Huang now stood silently outside Chen’s unit. Construction drawings courtesy of Shenzhen’s central planning department indicated that the only entrance and exit from Chen’s inner top floor unit was the front door. To be safe, however, Huang had deployed a team to the underground garage and a team to the outdoor fire escape. He kept his two remaining men with him. Confident that the exits were covered, he now listened for any sign of movement inside the condominium. When none was found, Huang took the direct approach. He rang the bell.
***
Michael froze as the roar of an ocean wave rushed through the room. He reflected that either Chen’s apartment was a lot closer to the beach than he thought or they had a problem. Following the synthesized roar to a doorbell mounted above the front door confirmed the second scenario. They now stood within a few feet of the front door, the capsule held between them. Kate lifted a hand, balancing the load which Michael estimated to be about sixty pounds on her thigh. She indicated that they should wait before proceeding forward. There was an interminable pause. And then the doorbell rang again.
***
Huang decided he was done announcing himself. He motioned to the two men behind him, one of whom was carrying a police issue close quarter battering ram. A single hit from the device would easily breach the exterior door. Huang’s subordinate moved into position, but Huang took the compact battering ram from him. He wanted no mistakes and he trusted only himself not to make them. Huang stepped to the side of the door, preparing to throw his full eighty kilogram body weight behind the ram, his two sub-agents at the ready behind him. Then he silently counted down from three with his fingers. Huang’s last finger came down, and he let loose with the ram, a loud crash echoing throughout the hall.
***
But Michael and Kate barely heard it. They had reversed course from the front door and were now passing the capsule over the gap to the neighboring balcony. Michael caught a glimpse of their pursuers’ shadows through the beaded curtain, but had shuffled over the railing onto the next balcony before they got much closer. They shuffled over one more balcony wall and found themselves in the adjoining outer hall. Not a terribly secure way of designing a building, Michael thought, but it probably worked well for amorous couples in need of a quick escape. The outer hallway was clear and Michael found himself calculating the odds that the elevator was still on their floor. Fortunately, the math was with them and twenty seconds later they found themselves on the garage level, Kate jamming open the stainless steel face panel covering the elevator buttons with her Swiss knife.
***
“Get the car,” Kate said.
Michael hit Chen’s key fob, a shiny blue and white Mini Cooper chirping back at him from the parking lot. Michael dropped his end of the capsule and strode a dozen steps, slipping into the driver’s seat and cranking the engine. Chips of concrete began to explode around him before the motor even caught. It was automatic gunfire. A team of men had made it down into the garage and now held a bead on Michael from the opposite wall. Michael did the first thing that came to mind. He ducked down low in the Mini and threw it into reverse, motoring the little car backwards toward the open elevator. Michael hit the trunk release as he squealed backwards on the slickly polished concrete floor. Shots rang out, reverberating off the concrete walls one after another, but Michael refused to look up. Instead he stared straight back through the open hatch, pounding on the brakes just before impact with the elevator.
The Mini hit with a crash, buckling in the rear hatch, but Kate knew this was her moment and she took it. Stepping away from the elevator wall, she fired two carefully aimed shots, scattering Huang’s men. She then picked up the metal capsule with one big hernia inducing heave and shoved it into the rear of the Mini, diving in over it.
“Drive!”
Michael needed no further encouragement. Slamming the car into gear, he took advantage of the lull to screech around one pylon and then another and up the exit ramp. Sparks flew as the Mini’s chassis bottomed out, hitting the rise to ground level at speed. There was an enormous bump, followed by the grating of metal on concrete, and like that they were out of the garage. But they weren’t out of the woods. Because even as they raced past the guard gate, Michael saw their pursuers sprinting toward their vehicles. Whoever they were, they weren’t giving up.
Chapter 14
Michael plowed the beat up Mini through the Chinese night with no idea where he was going, but every intention of getting there fast. Already he could see headlights gaining on them in his rearview mirror.
“Who are they?”
“By the looks of them, I’d say someone official, probably Ministry.”
“Ministry of what?”
“State Security. China’s CIA. Turn here.”
Michael could barely see the turn off for the fields, but he responded to the cold confidence in Kate’s voice with laser precision. The rear end of the Mini swung around and a second later they were flying along the rutted washboard gravel of the tiny service road. Kate didn’t have to tell him to turn off the headlights. He did so instinctively, using the moon to guide him.
“Why are they after us?”
“You tell me, Sherlock. We just robbed a dead guy.”
“They didn’t know that.”
“Look, I don’t know how they found us or what they want, but it doesn’t make any difference now,” Kate said, staring down the road. “The airport is less than a mile north of here.”
“So?”
“So punch it.”
Michael hit the accelerator, actually getting air off the next rise in the dirt road. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he could see the headlights relentlessly following. Ahead, the lighted airport control tower came into view. He floored the Mini over another bump and as his head hit the roof he could just make out the blue lights of the taxiway. It looked like metal far ahead, metal glinting off the poles of a chain link fence.
They flew over another rise and now Michael was sure of it. The road dead ended in a meandering concrete drainage ditch bordered by a chain link fence, several feet of barbed wire rimming the top. On the left side of the road a gravel ramp extended to the east. It was clearly the beginning of a bridge over the drainage ditch but the forms were empty and the concrete had yet to be poured. Idle road making equipment sat in the shadows. To the right there was nothing, just the long expanse of fence and ditch, the groomed expanse of the airport beyond. Michael glanced behind him. Their pursuers were still gaining. His seat belt was secured. He looked over at Kate and saw that hers was too.
“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.”