Huang ordered his men to retreat, but by the time the words had left his mouth, the bullets were already flying. The assault appeared to originate from the south side of the peak. His agents attempted to return fire but their assailants were well covered behind the rocks. With nowhere to run, his men were sitting ducks. And Huang would have been too if not for a simple piece of luck. He was still wearing his climbing harness. Rolling to his side, Huang was able to clip back into his top rope and lower himself over the far edge of the cliff. There he had found a rock outcropping in the lee of the karst. And there he had patiently waited while his men were slaughtered above.
* * *
Michael was running on pure adrenaline. All he could say for certain was that both his and Kate’s hands were zip cuffed behind their backs as they rumbled down the road in the rear cab of an eighteen wheeler towing a Nazi airplane. Tung’s sinewy enforcer held the wheel while another member of the Triad crew rode shotgun. Apart from these few facts, the only other thing that was clear was that time was running out. Michael was thinking big picture, spy style now. If the Chinese satellite was still in the sky, it wouldn’t be there for long. The boys in tech needed to find the clear-code. And if they found it, Michael needed to send it. Regardless of his personal motivations, that was his mission now. That was why he was here.
It was for this reason that Michael knew it was time to act when their truck slowed, rattling to a stop alongside an open fire on the road. Craning his neck toward the driver’s side window, he was able to see that they had pulled up beside a corrugated tin shack home to several men drinking tea around their roadside campfire. Tung’s enforcer removed the keys from the ignition, clipping them to his belt, and along with his wiry companion, they opened the vehicle’s doors to exit the cab. But before Michael was able to even formulate a plan he felt Kate’s feet on his back shoving him forward. He tumbled ahead, face first into the long gearshift between driver and passenger seats, unable to break his fall thanks to his tightly cuffed hands.
The move evidently took Tung’s enforcer by surprise as well, because instead of twisting aside to avoid Michael’s fall, he was set off balance and shoved halfway out the door. His accomplice reached for his weapon, but the Uzi hanging from his left side got caught up in the wheel well. He hesitated and Kate rolled through the gap between the seats. She hauled back with both feet, booting him from the cab. On Michael’s side the driver regained his balance, taking hold of Michael’s hair and yanking him toward the door. Chin down on the seat, Michael eyed the truck keys dangling from the man’s belt as he was pulled inexorably out of the vehicle. Kate must have been thinking the same thing because he felt her slam her body against the backs of his legs, screaming one word.
“Key!”
Michael felt what he thought were Kate’s lips on the back of his wrists. The he heard an enormous groan.
“Pull!”
Michael wrenched at his wrists, finally realizing what Kate was doing. She was biting through the plastic cuffs. Michael could feel them weakening, Kate’s hot saliva dripping down as he stretched the cuffs between his wrists. The plastic was stretching beyond its breaking point. Kate bit down again and the cuffs snapped. Tung’s man was still yanking Michael by the hair, but Michael’s hands were newly free and he reached for the man’s crotch with his left hand and the truck keys with his right. As he did so, he felt Kate kick like a dolphin with both feet out the passenger side door. Her blow must have knocked the Triad guy off his feet for the second time because he heard a moan even before he squeezed the driver’s balls. Michael slammed the door and threw the keys into the ignition.
Kate screamed, “Drive!”
Michael fired up the truck and whatever Kate said next was lost in a burst of machine gun fire. It didn’t matter, though. Michael’s feet had already found the pedals. Still lying low, he popped the big rig into gear and hit the accelerator, lurching blindly into the night.
Chapter 50
Mobi wasn’t disappointed, he was devastated. If the Chinese Launch Center was destroyed it meant they had no access to an appropriately encoded transceiver. That in turn meant the clear-code was useless. Which ultimately meant that a lot of innocent people would die. And they would start dying soon. In silent acknowledgment of this fact, Mobi slumped forward and closed his eyes, burrowing his forehead into the metal desk. There was nothing he could do now and he knew it. Rand’s men had recuffed his hands behind his back, seating him as far away from a computer terminal as they could get him. They had then taken up position outside Mission Control’s open exit doors.
To make matters worse, Mobi was now convinced that Alvarez was the mole. Rand had access as well, but Alvarez was the one cozying up to Quiann. Mobi wondered why she had put him in contact with Quiann. Was it to implicate him in her web? Alvarez, meanwhile, stood near the front of Mission Control, sucking back a soda as though she didn’t have a care in the world. He wished he understood her motives, but it didn’t really matter, not anymore.
At least, Mobi thought, he had no family in California. All of his friends were right here at JPL and he hoped they would be able to get on the freeway and out of town, even though he saw no such option for himself. When it was all over, people would be looking for a scapegoat. He’d be dead, but it wouldn’t stop them from blaming him for the dispersal of plutonium into the atmosphere. Or for incinerating half the state. These and a thousand other thoughts plagued Mobi even as he felt the tap on his head. He thought the tap felt like freezing rain. Or hail. No doubt they’d blame him for global warming as well. All on the back of one stupid satellite.
Mobi felt another tap and opened his eyes. But it wasn’t hailing. In fact the only thing that was different was that Alvarez stood much closer than she had before and there were two ice cubes melting into a tiny pool on his desk. Mobi opened his mouth, about to ask Alvarez why she was lobbing ice at him, but instead he followed her gaze to the guards watching them from either door. Alvarez then took out her phone and checked her voicemail, letting the phone hang down in one hand as she walked past Mobi. Mobi had no idea what to think until he read the phone’s screen: “Transceiver acquired. Clear-code?”
Mobi just shook his head. If what Rand had said was true, the clear-code was useless. Then why keep bothering him? Mobi looked away. And in that moment Alvarez tripped, spilling Diet Coke all over him.
“I am so sorry.” Alvarez said. Then she whispered, “We have an agent on the ground. Give me the clear-code, you stubborn-ass, Caltech dork.”
Was she serious? Was she actually bullying him? Still, something about the way she said “dork” made Mobi smile. She might be a traitor, but what kind of traitor talked like that? Maybe he was wrong about her. Mobi just didn’t know. But he did have the clear-code. If there was even a chance he could do some good with it, he decided in that moment it was a chance he would take. Hoping against hope, Mobi dangled all ten fingers behind his chair and carefully signed the seventeen digit clear-code to Alvarez who now stood at the back of the room.